Brahms: Piano Quartet op.25 / Ballades op.10
Back in those awful days before recordings, there was an entire industry devoted to making chamber reductions of large orchestral pieces, because if you wanted to hear the latest symphony, you had to play it yourself at home. Recordings changed all that, and now we have just the opposite: a trend towards playing chamber music in arrangements for large orchestra. Many listeners, then, may be familiar with this piano quartet from Schoenberg's wacky orchestral transcription, which features all kinds of instruments (like xylophone and celesta) that would have given Brahms a heart attack. In any case, here's an excellent performance of the original work, and it's really fun to listen to both versions. Check them out and see what you think.--David Hurwitz