Brahms, Johannes - String Quintet f-moll Op.34

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Brahms, Johannes

String Quintet f-moll Op.34

String Quintet
incl. Score

Arr.: Thomas-Mifune, Werner

Foreword "Brahms String Quintet op.34"
In August 1862, during a stay in Hamm near Hamburg, Brahms completed a String Quintet in F minor for 2 violins, viola and two cellos. Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim, who where the first people to receive a copy, thought the quintet was a work of deepest meaning, but criticized the Instrumentation. C.Schumann nevertheless had the idea to distribute the work over an orchestra. J.Joachim refused a public performance of the Quintet (This Joachim had also refused the premiere of the wonderful violin concerto by Robert Schumann, and he had in his will that this violin concerto was not to be played for a hundred years !). Brahms accepted Joachim´s opinion, adapted the work for two pianos (Op.34a) and must have then destroyed that string quintet manuscript. Clara Schumann also felt the version for 2 pianos to be a compromise, and so Brahms wrote a third processing for piano quintet. The main idea, a string quintet, had been such a specific - almost symphonic string composition that the change including a piano proved to confirm my tresured composition teacher Günter Bialas´s sentence: "piano quartets or quintets are piano concertos with a reduced orchestra". Because of that I recommend to perform the work with a chamber orchestra, the minimum of 3 cellos ( Vc.1 = 2 cellos, 2 Vc.2 = 1 cello) should be maintained, because the base is a string quintet.
Munich 2013
Werner Thomas-Mifune