Open Data Service, University of Southampton

Beethoven String Quartet in E minor, Op 59 No 2
Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, Op 34

A compelling combination, as the Chiaroscuros and pianist Cédric Tiberghien return.

Tonight, they perform Brahms’ chamber music masterpiece. The work’s chequered history saw it originally written for string quintet. It was then revised for piano duo, before Brahms’ friend and mentor Clara Schumann’s recommendation to reshape it again. The version for string quartet and piano, which we hear this evening, was premiered in 1865. Writing to Brahms after its first performance, conductor Hermann Levi declared: ‘The Quintet is beautiful beyond words. Anyone who did not know it in its earlier forms…would never believe that it was not originally thought out and designed for the present combination of instruments… You have turned a monotonous work for two pianos into a thing of great beauty, a masterpiece of chamber music…’.

The concert opens with Haydn’s work. Broadcaster and critic Hans Keller described as ‘the first great string quartet in the history of music’.