Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quintet is not only one of the mightiest works in its genre but a climax in his chamber music œuvre. This new volume adopts the definitive text from the New Complete Edition of Brahms’s Works.
Content/Details
- Piano Quintet f minor op. 34
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Preface
The Piano Quintet in F minor op. 34 is one of Johannes Brahms’s most substantial and best-known pieces of chamber music. By the time it appeared in print, around the end of 1865 or the beginning of 1866, it already had a long history and two previous stages behind it. In August 1862, the twenty-nine-year-old composer had, shortly before his first trip to Vienna, completed a … more
Critical Commentary
About the composer

Johannes Brahms
His significant output comprises chamber music, piano works, numerous choral compositions and songs (including settings of folk-song lyrics), as well as large-scale orchestral works in the 1870s and 1880s. His compositions are characterized by the process of developing variation. He is considered an antithesis to the New German School around Liszt, and an advocate of “absolute” music.
1833 | Born in Hamburg on May 7, the son of a musician. His first piano instruction with Willibald Cossel at age seven, then with Eduard Marxen; first public performances from 1843. |
1853 | Concert tour through German cities; he meets Schumann, who announces him as the next great composer in his essay “Neue Bahnen” (“New Paths”). A lifelong, intimate friendship develops with Clara Schumann. |
1854–57 | Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15. |
1857–59 | Choir director, pianist, and teacher at the royal court in Detmold. |
1859–61 | Director of the Hamburg Women’s Choir. |
1860 | Manifesto against the New Germans around Liszt. |
1863 | Cantata “Rinaldo,” Op. 50. |
1863–64 | Director of the Wiener Singakademie. |
1868 | Partial performance in Vienna of “A German Requiem,” Op. 45 (the complete work premiered in Leipzig in 1869) |
1871–74 | Artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music) in Vienna. |
1873 | Haydn Variations, Op. 56a, for orchestra. |
from 1877 | His symphonic output begins with the Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 (begun 1862); composition of the Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73; the Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 (1883); and Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 (1884–85): cantabile themes, chamber-music-like style. |
from 1878 | Travels in Italy. |
1878 | Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, for Joseph Joachim. |
1881 | Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83, with a scherzo movement. |
1886 | Honorary president of Vienna’s Tonkünstlerverein (Association of Musicians). |
1897 | Four Serious Songs, Op. 121. Dies in Vienna on April 3. |
About the authors
This edition of Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor op. 34 is a typical example of a careful modern “Urtext” edtion in which all the available sources have been analysed and their significance in the process of composition determined. Careful detective work has shed light on the composer’s involvement in the correction of proofs, and a number of unwarranted additions and alterations that occurred in early twentieth-century editions have been rectified.
This Henle edition replaces the previous Urtext edition issued in 1971. It contains a preface with historical background notes as well as a detailed description and evaluation of the manuscript sources and early printings. In the Critical Comments readers will also find an exhaustive account of Brahms’ own many changes in the compositional process.
Henle heeft een zeer overzichtelijke en opnieuw gereviseerde Urtext-uitgave verzorgd: de afzonderlijke partijen zijn ruimtelijk goed ingedeeld en de pianist kann de vier strijkers makkelijk volgen vanuit zijn eigen pianopartituur. Een uitdaging voor iedere liefhebber van kamermuziek en voor de liefhebbers van Brahms in het bijzonder.