Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1; Ballades op. 10

In this recording, the pianist is Emil Gilels and the ensemble is the Amadeus Quartet. The violinist is Norbert Brainin, the violist is Peter Schidlof and the cellist is Martin Lovett.

## Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1

The Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, was composed by Johannes Brahms between 1856 and 1861. It was premiered in 1861 in Hamburg, with Clara Schumann at the piano. It was also played in Vienna on 16 November 1862, with Brahms himself at the piano supported by members of the Hellmesberger Quartet.

### Instrumentation

The piece is scored for the following instruments: Piano, Violin, Viola and Cello.

### Movements

The movements are named as follows:

1. Allegro
2. Allegro, ma non troppo
3. Andante con moto
4. Rondo alla Zingarese: Presto

## Brahms: 4 Ballades op. 10

The Ballades, Op. 10, are lyrical piano pieces written by Johannes Brahms during his youth. They were dated 1854 and were dedicated to his friend Julius Otto Grimm. Their composition coincided with the beginning of the composer's lifelong affection for the pianist and composer Clara Schumann, who was helping Brahms launch his career. Frédéric Chopin had written the last of his famous ballades only 12 years earlier, but Brahms approached the genre differently from Chopin, choosing to take its origin in narrative poetry more literally.

### Movements

The movements are named as follows:

1. Andante - Allegro - Andante (After the Scottish Ballad "Edward" in Herder's "Stimmen der Völker)
2. Andante - Allegro non troppo - Molto staccato e leggiero - Andante
3. Intermezzo. Allegro
4. Andante con moto

Brahms's ballades are arranged in two pairs of two, the members of each pair being in parallel keys.

## Program Note - A sensation in cultural diplomacy

The recording if Brahms's Piano Quartet in G minor was one of the earliest projects which Deutsche Grammophon undertook with the Odessa-born pianist Emil Gilels. The producers were already experienced in working with famous, unpredictable, immensely wilful star pianists from the USSR. If Sviatoslav Richter had been the first great catch, Gilels was the second, and the tradition has been sustained to the present, with players such as Lazar Berman, Andrei Gavrilov, Lilya Zilberstein and Anatol Ugorski. In those days, in the late '60s and early '70s, a contract between an artist from the Soviet Union and a Western label was a sensational event in cultural diplomacy. Such claspings of hands had a significance that went far beyond the musical or the interpersonal: they represented signals, liable to be measured with seismographic precision, about the small steps of rapprochement being made between the Eastern and Western blocs, straws in the wind of hopes for peace. Thus the participation of Emil Gilels in the G minor Piano Quartet was more than a matter of signing a musician of erudition and noble ideals for a recording of one of the most symphonic and impassioned of 19th-century chamber-music works; he was simultaneously making an artist's contribution to the demolition of prejudices and the construction of a future without fear.

The three distinguished musicians who joined Gilels in the studio brought a wealth of experience with them, though they were young at heart. At the time of the recording the Amadeus Quartet was already one of the longest established chamber-music ensembles, and more than that, to connoisseurs and knowledgeable amateurs throughout the world it was a byword for musicianship, a rock in the treacherous tides of the music industry. Yet when its three members recorded the Brahms Piano Quartet with Gilels, the Amadeus, founded in 1947, was only about halfway through its career.

Some five years after the Brahms, Emil Gilels and members of the Amadeus Quartet met again to make a recording of Schubert's much-loved "Trout" Quintet for Deutsche Grammophon. Only a few days after that, Gilels returned to the studio to record Brahms's Four Ballades op.10 - pieces which he included regularly in his recitals. Brahms's biographer Max Kalbeck called them "slow movements for unwritten sonatas". In his exposition of their gravity, their alternation of imperious declamation and tender whispers, the tales they tell as it were inwardly, Emil Gilels gave clues to his own artistic psyche, even to his personal character, if one chooses to pursue the search a little further. For the measured tread with which he took the platform, the professorial weighing of his words and the restrained passion of his (musical) outbursts seem to be prefigured in the temper and the character of these "piano stories without words". "Without words" only in so far as nos.2, 3 and 4 have no literary source, whereas the first, in both form and content, represents the composer's reaction to the Scottish ballad *Edward*, in the German version Herder included in his seminal collection of folk poetry.

*Peter Cossé*

*(Translation: Mary Whittall)*

## Reviews

One of the most significant pianists of the 20th century and three members of one of the most celebrated, longest established and best-loved chamber-music ensembles: Emil Gilels and the Amadeus Quartet meet here in the colourful, exuberant escapades of Brahms's G minor Piano Quartet, to form a kind of reproductive cell with which to serve the universal spirit of chamber music. When the recording first appeared in the early 1970s the combination of Soviet-Anglo-Austrian star performers naturally aroused extraordinary interest: "As rich and glowing a performance of Brahms's masterly G minor Piano Quartet as you are ever likely to hear", wrote Records and Recordings. Since his triumphal visits to America, his performances of the Second Piano Concerto had earned Gilels the reputation of a powerful, awe-inspiring Brahmsian, and he carried this presence over into the composer's chamber music, together with his characteristic attention to detail.

## Links

For the playlist of the album, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPAqgfXOtvg&list=OLAK5uy\_kvWS2MaR0usiYu4y9Ln85XZ9otobYLTkg

For more details on the album, click here: https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/brahms-piano-quartet-gilels-amadeus-quartet-3435

For the official Deutsche Grammophon website, click here: https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en

## Notes

* Art Direction - Hartmut Pfeiffer
* Composer - Johannes Brahms
* Engineers - Hans-Rudolf Müller, Klaus Scheibe, Heinz Wildhagen, Jobst Eberhardt
* Executive-Producer - Hans Hirsch
* Liner Notes - Peter Cossé, Mary Whittall, Hélène Chen-Ménissier, Gabriele Cervone
* Photographers - Werner Neumeister, Siegfried Lauterwasser
* Pianist - Emil Gilels
* Producers - Günther Breest, Werner Mayer
* Sound - Stereo
* Recording dates - December 1970 (Quartet), September 1975 (Ballades)
* Recording venues - Munich, Bavaria-Studio (Quartet), Turku, Finland, Concert Hall (Ballades)
* Total duration - 64'32