The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B♭ major, Op. 83, by Johannes Brahms is separated by a gap of 22 years from his first piano concerto. Brahms began work on the piece in 1878 and completed it in 1881 while in Pressbaum near Vienna. It took him three years to work on this concerto, which indicates that he was always self-critical. He wrote to Clara Schumann: "I want to tell you that I have written a very small piano concerto with a very small and pretty scherzo." Ironically, he was describing a huge piece. This concerto is dedicated to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen. The public premiere of the concerto was given in Budapest on 9 November 1881, with Brahms as soloist and the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, and was an immediate success. He proceeded to perform the piece in many cities across Europe.
The Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, by Johannes Brahms was completed during the summer of 1864 and published in 1865. It was dedicated to Her Royal Highness Princess Anna of Hesse. As with most piano quintets composed after Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet (1842), it is written for piano and string quartet.
The Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10, by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1924–1925, and first performed in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Nicolai Malko on 12 May 1926. Shostakovich wrote the work as his graduation piece at the Petrograd Conservatory, completing it at the age of 19.
Cyclic form is a technique of musical construction, involving multiple sections or movements, in which a theme, melody, or thematic material occurs in more than one movement as a unifying device. Sometimes a theme may occur at the beginning and end ; other times a theme occurs in a different guise in every part.
Franz Schubert's final chamber work, the String Quintet in C major is sometimes called the "Cello Quintet" because it is scored for a standard string quartet plus an extra cello instead of the extra viola which is more usual in conventional string quintets. It was composed in 1828 and completed just two months before the composer's death. The first public performance of the piece did not occur until 1850, and publication occurred three years later in 1853. Schubert's only full-fledged string quintet, it has been praised as "sublime" or "extraordinary" and as possessing "bottomless pathos," and is generally regarded as Schubert's finest chamber work as well as one of the greatest compositions in all chamber music.
Friedrich Gernsheim was a German composer, conductor and pianist.
Walter Rabl was a Viennese composer, conductor, and teacher of vocal music. Largely forgotten today, Rabl left only a small number of works, all of them early ones, from the twilight of the Romantic era. At the age of 30 he stopped composing entirely and devoted himself to conducting and vocal coaching the rest of his life.
The String Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20, MWV R 20, was written by the 16-year-old Felix Mendelssohn during the fall of 1825 and completed on October 15. Written for four violins, two violas, and two cellos, this work created a new chamber music genre. Conrad Wilson summarizes much of its reception ever since: "Its youthful verve, brilliance and perfection make it one of the miracles of nineteenth-century music." This was one of the first works of Mendelssohn to be very well received.
Antonín Dvořák's Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major Op. 81, B. 155, is a quintet for piano, 2 violins, viola, and cello. It was composed between August 18 and October 8, 1887, and was premiered in Prague on January 6, 1888. The quintet is acknowledged as one of the masterpieces in the form, along with those of Schumann, Brahms and Shostakovich.
The Horn Trio in E♭ major, Op. 40, by Johannes Brahms is a chamber piece in four movements written for natural horn, violin, and piano. Composed in 1865, the work commemorates the death of Brahms's mother, Christiane, earlier that year. However, it draws on a theme which Brahms had composed twelve years previously but did not publish at the time.
Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49, was completed on 23 September 1839 and published the following year. The work is scored for a standard piano trio consisting of violin, cello and piano. It is one of Mendelssohn's most popular chamber works and is recognized as one of his greatest along with his Octet, Op. 20. During the initial composition of the work, Mendelssohn took the advice of fellow composer Ferdinand Hiller to revise the piano part. Hiller wrote, "with his usual conscientious earnestness when once he had made up his mind, he undertook the length and rewrite the whole pianoforte part."
Johannes Brahms composed his Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, Op. 87, between 1880 and 1882. It is scored for piano, violin and cello. He wrote this piece at the age of 49.
The Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor, Op. 101, by Johannes Brahms is scored for piano, violin and cello, and was written in the summer of 1886 while Brahms was on holiday in Hofstetten, Switzerland. It was premiered on 20 December of that year by Brahms, violinist Jenő Hubay, and cellist David Popper.
The Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60, completed by Johannes Brahms in 1875, is scored for piano, violin, viola and cello. It is sometimes called the Werther Quartet after Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. The premiere took place in Vienna on November 18, 1875, to an anxious public. Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima were in attendance.
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. Like most piano quartets, it is scored for piano, violin, viola, and cello.
The Piano Quartet in E♭ major, Op. 47, was composed by Robert Schumann in 1842 for piano, violin, viola and cello. Written during a productive period in which he produced several large-scale chamber music works, it has been described as the "creative double" of his Piano Quintet, finished weeks earlier. Though dedicated to the Russian cellist Mathieu Wielhorsky, it was written with Schumann's wife Clara in mind, who would be the pianist at the premiere on 8 December 1844 in Leipzig.
The Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100, by Johannes Brahms was written while spending the summer of 1886 in Thun in the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland.
Gabriel Fauré's Piano Quartet No. 2, in G minor, Op. 45, is one of the two chamber works he wrote for the conventional piano quartet combination of piano, violin, viola and cello. It was first performed in 1887, seven years after his first quartet.
The Piano Quartet in B♭ major, Op. 41, also known as the Piano Quartet No. 2, was written by Camille Saint-Saëns in February 1875. Dedicated to Jules Foucault, it was premiered on 6 March 1875 in Paris. It has been called one of Saint-Saëns' neglected masterpieces and is in the core repertoire of the piano quartet.
