Johannes Brahms - String Quartet No.1 in C minor, Op.51/,in A minor, Op.51 No 2

 

 

 

 

 

Johannes Brahms

 

(1833 - 1897)

 

 

String Quartet No.1 in C minor, Op.51 No.1

Quartetto Italiano (1967)

Johannes Brahms's String Quartets Nos. 1 in C minor and 2 in A minor were completed in Tutzing, Bavaria, during the summer of 1873, and published together that autumn as Opus 51. They are dedicated to his friend Theodor Billroth.

 

 

 

 

                                                 THE ZAGREB STRING QUARTET | SINCE 1919

 

                      

 

브람스의 동시대 독일인들은 그를 베토벤의 계승자라고 생각했다. 이런 기대감에 짓눌린 브람스는

 

교향곡과 현악 4중주 장르에서는 좀처럼 기를 펴지 못했다. 그는 스무 번째까지 작곡한 현악 4중주는

 

모두 없애 버렸다고 했는데, 심한 과장이 아닐 것이다.

 

그는 1873년에야 비로소 op. 51이라는 표제로 두 곡을 출판하기로 하고 2년 후에 4중주곡을 한 곡 더

 

발표했으며, 그 직후에 교향곡 1번을 완성했다. 그가 발표한 현악 4중주를 살펴보면, C단조 op. 51-1은

 

웅장하고 영웅적이기까지 하다. B♭장조, op. 67은 경쾌한 곡이며 A단조 op. 51-2의 분위기는 두 곡의

 

중간 정도이다.

 

 

Brahms was slow in writing his first two string quartets. We know from a letter from Joseph Joachim that a C-minor quartet was in progress in 1865, but it may not have been the same work that would become Opus 51 No. 1 in 1873. Four years before publication, however, in 1869, we know for certain that the two quartets were complete enough to be played through. But the composer remained unsatisfied. Years passed. New practice runs then occurred in Munich, probably in June 1873, and Brahms ventured south of the city to the small lakeside town of Tutzing for a summer respite. There, with the Würmsee (as Lake Starnberg was then called) and the Bavarian Prealps as backdrop, he put the finishing touches on the two quartets.

He was 40 years old at the time of publication. Brahms regarded the string quartet as a particularly important genre. He reportedly destroyed some twenty string quartets before allowing the two Op. 51 quartets to be published.^[1] At least one of the quartets (No. 1 in C minor) had been complete as early as 1865 but Brahms continued to revise it for nearly a decade.^[1]

Explaining his slow progress to a publisher in 1869, Brahms wrote that as Mozart had taken "particular trouble" over the six "beautiful" Haydn Quartets, he intended to do his "very best to turn out one or two passably decent ones."^[1] According to his friend Max Kalbeck, Brahms insisted on hearing a secret performance of the Op. 51 quartets before they were published, after which he substantially revised them.

During Brahms's lifetime, the string quartet, like the symphony, was a genre dominated by the contributions of Ludwig van Beethoven. In choosing the key of C minor for the first of his quartets, Brahms may have been seeking to acknowledge as well as break free from Beethoven's paralyzing influence, since Beethoven composed some of his greatest and most characteristic works in that key.^[1] (Brahms likewise chose the key of C minor for his First Symphony.)

Structure

The "terse," "tragic"^[2] String Quartet No. 1 in C minor is remarkable for its organic unity and for the harmonically sophisticated, "orchestrally inclined" outer movements that bracket its more intimate inner movements.^[1] Structurally and thematically, the first movement shows the influence of Schubert's Quartettsatz, D. 703, also in C minor.^[2] The quartet consists of four movements:

1. Allegro (C minor)
2. Romanze: Poco adagio (A-flat major)
3. Allegretto molto moderato e comodo (F minor)
4. Allegro (C minor)

 

String Quartet No 2 in A minor, Op.51 No 2

 

 

Jerusalem Quartet"

Alexander Pavlovsky - violin
Sergei Bresler - violin
Ori Kam - viola
Kyril Zlotnikov - cello

Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre
St. Petersburg
4 December 2013

 

The String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, also highly unified thematically, is comparatively lyrical, although culminating in a dramatic and propulsive finale whose tension "derives...from a metrical conflict between theme and accompaniment."^[3] Like Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 1 and Violin Concerto, the A minor quartet has a final movement modeled on a Hungarian folk dance, in this case a czárdás.^[4]

 

The quartet consists of four movements:

1. Allegro non troppo (A minor)
2. Andante moderato (A major)
3. Quasi Minuetto, moderato (A minor)
4. Finale. Allegro non assai (A minor)

With all the movements in A minor or A major, the String Quartet No. 2 is therefore homotonal. Each quartet lasts about half an hour in performance.

 

Quartetto Italiano:
Paolo Borciani (Reggio Emilia, 21 dicembre 1922 - 5 luglio 1985): Violino I
Elisa Pegreffi (Genova, 10 giugno 1922): Violino II
Piero Farulli (Firenze, 13 gennaio 1920 - Fiesole, 2 settembre 2012): Viola
Franco Rossi (Venezia, 31 marzo 1921 - Firenze, 28 novembre 2006): Violoncello

Critical reception

The Op. 51 string quartets were received "respectfully if without great enthusiasm" at their respective premieres in October and December 1873.^[5] While the quartets have enjoyed less popularity than some of Brahms's other chamber music, they helped revitalize "the great but moribund tradition" of the string quartet that had stagnated after Beethoven and Schubert, and helped inspire the quartets of Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók, and other twentieth century composers.^[5] In his famous essay "Brahms the Progressive", Schoenberg praised the quartets for their advanced harmony and for the unprecedented completeness with which Brahms derives each movement from a tiny motif.^[6]

The Op. 51 quartets have been recorded by such ensembles as the Amadeus Quartet, Quartetto Italiano, Alban Berg Quartet, Cleveland Quartet, Tokyo Quartet, Emerson Quartet and Takács Quartet.