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Two superb early stereo recordings from DGG
Notes on the transfer: The first two of Brahms' Piano Quartets rarely feature together on a single disc due to their length. However, the omission of a repeat in the first movement of the Second Quartet reduces the duration considerably. Even so, having re-pitched these recordings to concert A440 I found them to be nearly 90 second too long to fit onto a single disc. However, a clear and exact 50Hz tone which ran through the second LP led me to believe that the original pitching, when replayed at an accurate 33 1/3rpm, most probably did represent the pitch the ensemble had tuned to, which was somewhat sharp of standard concert pitch. With the quartets' original pitches were restored, which had the effect of speeding the recordings up, I was relieved to discover I could squeeze both onto an eighty-minute CD with seconds to spare. Both recordings responded well to XR remastering techniques, which served both to lift the very top end and also to round out what was a somewhat thin lower midrange in the originals. The near-mint first LP disc exhibited a curious if very mild peak distortion through the first minute of both sides, which quickly subsided. The second disc, a slightly later pressing, was immaculate in every respect. Both recordings are amonst the very earliest examples of stereo recordings from Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft.
Johannes Brahms biographical notes from Wikipedia
Johannes Brahms ) (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897), German composer and pianist, was one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene. In his lifetime, Brahms' popularity and influence were considerable; following a comment by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow, he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the Three Bs. Brahms composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he gave the first performance of many of his own works; he also worked with the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed many of his works and left some of them unpublished. Brahms was at once a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Baroque and Classical masters. He was a master of counterpoint, the complex and highly disciplined method of composition for which Bach is famous, and also of development, a compositional ethos pioneered by Beethoven. Brahms aimed to honour the "purity" of these venerable "German" structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as the progressive Arnold Schoenberg and the conservative Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms' works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers.
PIANO QUARTET NO. 1 in G MINOR, OP. 25
This is an extremely significant work in Brahms’s compositional development, one of the earliest masterpieces of the Hamburg second period (the “first maturity”). The pair of quartets for piano and strings, Opp. 25 and 26, are of huge proportions, expanding even on already large works such as the F-minor piano sonata, B-major piano trio, and B-flat major string sextet. (The second quartet, Op. 26 in A major, is a more “pastoral” counterpart to the “tragic/heroic” Op. 25.) Each movement is laid out on an enormous scale. The first movement of the G-minor work is the earliest example of an approach to sonata form which Brahms would make a personal trademark: bringing back the unaltered principal theme at the beginning of the development section and abbreviating the recapitulation accordingly. The concept was not yet polished. The gigantic, sprawling exposition is unparalleled in later works, and because of this, the recapitulation is altered to a greater extent than would become common later. It is perhaps his darkest, most tragic instrumental movement to date. As in the B-major trio, the scherzo/trio-type movement was placed second, and was originally titled “Scherzo,” but Brahms re-titled it “Intermezzo” because of its large layout and subdued character. It would also become a sort of model for later “scherzo substitutes.” Although the main theme of the slow movement is intensely lyrical, the piece is most notable for its extended and brilliant central triple-time march. The finale, a virtuoso showpiece, is the composer’s most sectionalized Rondo form and an early example of explicitly gypsy-inspired music, a style that would serve him well throughout his career. The “Gypsy Rondo” was praised by his Hungarian violinist friend Joseph Joachim (who thought the first movement undisciplined) as an accurate imitation of Hungarian idioms. Its sectionalized nature balances the organically developmental first movement. Rarely did Brahms write anything quite as viscerally exciting as the last two pages. Arnold Schoenberg was especially fond of this quartet. He used it as an example of Brahms’s early approach to what he called “developing variation.” He arranged the piece for full orchestra, skillfully coloring such passages as the slow movement’s march section. These notes ©2004-2009 Kelly Dean Hanson A listening guide: http://www.kellydeanhansen.com/opus25.html
Brahms notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Busch Score from IMSLP: http://imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Quartet_in_G_minor,_Op.25_(Brahms,_Johannes) Score from IMSLP: http://imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Quartet_No.2,_Op.26_(Brahms,_Johannes)
Notes on the 24-bit download: Please see this page for test files and further information regarding this format. Although restoration work is done at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, we have upsampled the final 24-bit master to 48kHz for additional replay compatibility of our FLAC download. Our twenty-four bit FLAC downloads can be replayed in full quality using a standard DVD video player, a DVD writer and an inexpensive piece of PC software - see here for more information about replay from Video DVD discs.
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