Brahms wrote 24 works of chamber music, each of them masterpieces. His greatest chamber music work, the one in which the dual sides of his musical nature-his dark, turbulent romanticism and his rigorous classicism-were in the most fruitful conflict and balance is the F Minor Piano Quintet. It is a special favorite of mine and after Beethoven, I believe it to be one of the four great masterpieces of 19th century chamber music: the other three being the Schubert Quintet for strings, the Schumann Piano Quintet, and Brahms own Clarinet Quintet. I have heard the F Minor Quintet countless times in concert and I probably have 25 or 30 recordings of it.

How then do I explain that this obscure recording by this almost unknown quintet is one of the greatest if not the greatest recording I've ever heard of the work? The only way is to send out the music which is possible these days of Internet downloads. Describing music with words is akin to having a blind man describe the color blue or proving the binomial theorem with only rocks and sand. What you really do is describe how the music makes you feel. Well, I'll do what I can. First the quintet sounds like a loving and contentious family. Most groups have a famous pianist plus a famous quartet or string players. The Chigiano sound like string players plus one guy who just happens to play the piano, but when its his turn, wow! The strings constantly challenge the pianist, yet they are very integrated and sometimes you only know the piano is playing because of treble glints. There are just five voices, five elements of musical tissue - this is not a mini-concerto - plenty of conflict - but always forward movement.

In the development of the first movement, the romantic conflict is almost overwhelming and barely contained and then suddenly everybody closes ranks and the recapitulation is prepared as if nothing happened. There is calm at the end preparing for the utter Schubertian peace of the second movement. The Chigianos play this movement with such sweetness, unanimity and calm that one realizes that Brahms was a great lover of Schubert (he edited the Great C Major Symphony for publication). The opening measures of the movement seem to place us in a calm, dark, peaceful pool that is only occasionally disturbed during the movement. Here Brahms finds serenity. The Scherzo is overarchingly violent beyond anything else in Brahms I know and the Chigiano heighten the effect by accenting the cross-rhythms. Here the piano and the strings are really doing battle with each other and then quickly subsiding to get ready for the next assault. The strings, as they do throughout, really hold their own against the piano. The ending of the third movement is exhausting and I paused. One needs the mysterious, pianoless beginning of the last movement to recover and then the rather hearty but calm first theme enters. It doesn't stay calm long. The movement and the quintet ends in a fit of rage but with the Chigiano everything is musical if not serene.

Only 38 minutes, but I feel I have never heard so much of the work before. I have never heard the work as such a single entity before. I have never before heard the strings present such a solid front.

I have to say something about the restoration and re-mastering. The sound beggars my ability to praise it. To have captured what I have heard from some early 1950's LP took more than just supreme audio expertise; it had to take love and risk-taking in the service of love.

Reviewer: Bill Rosen

Find out more:

BBC Artist Profile
The Classical Music Pages
Johannes Brahms Websource