Nightingale String Quartet and clarinettist Jonas Frølund play Brahms's Clarinet Quintet.

The New Zealand String Quartet has a distinguished track record on disc, balancing homegrown with international repertoire. Its latest Naxos release offers the first two string quartets of Brahms, ...

Aside from soloists, it’s safe to say most classical musicians almost always have their sheet music close at hand. But the young players in the Chiara String Quartet have challenged themselves to ...

Brahms was apparently so petrified of comparisons with Beethoven's achievements in the form that he destroyed the 20 or so string quartets he composed as a youth before finally, having turned 40, ...

I feel much the same way about the Novus Quartet’s Brahms as I did about their Tchaikovsky (Aparté, 11/17), my initial encounter with this ensemble. There, I described the ensemble’s wiry, glistening ...

Brahms claimed to have written and destroyed 20 string quartets before he managed to complete any he wanted to keep. The two quartets of his Op. 51, which he wrote in 1873, ended a quarter century ...

There is an irresistible sweep here to the opening movement of the C minor Quartet Op 51 no 1. For all its technical accomplishment and ever increasing musical authority the Belcea is still a young ...

Brahms wrote three string quartets – or rather, he wrote three string quartets that he liked enough to let us hear them: we’ll never know how many were burned and abandoned along the way. The ...

Uninspired by his sketches for a Fifth and Sixth Symphony, Brahms intended the G-major Quintet to be his last work. A vibrant synthesis of Magyar snap, Baroque figures and Bohemian lyricism, it is ...