Brahms quartets from Krystian Zimerman and friends

There’s a certain ‘because we can’ feeling to today’s Recording of the Week - Krystian Zimerman and his chamber musicians presenting Brahms’s second and third piano quartets. Zimerman’s initial response to ‘why Brahms?’ is a feisty ‘why not?’, and he goes on to explain that the reason for recording Nos. 2 and 3 is that No. 1 has tended to overshadow the later two quartets.

The team he’s assembled around him comprises violinist Maria Nowak (co-leader of his Polish Festival Orchestra), violist Katarzyna Budnik (lead viola of the Sinfonia Varsovia) and cellist Yuya Okamoto (newly appointed cellist of the Ébène Quartet); and again Zimerman is disarmingly honest about the foursome having come together ‘more or less by coincidence’ - through serendipitous encounters at concerts and competitions. 

This all sounds like the setup to one of those films where a team of misfits and rogues are thrown together by chance - and yet to listen to the group’s playing you could be forgiven for thinking that this was some long-running musical dynasty like the Borodin String Quartet or Beaux Arts Trio. The delicate question of how concertante the piano part should be in chamber music is deftly handled, with Zimerman shifting between limelight, background and indeed at times an intriguing middle-ground where his part seems to take on a role like that of a wind section complementing the three string players. 

I’ve got into the habit of mentally hearing ‘real’ woodwind-y colours in these moments, with the result that, for example, the opening bare octaves of the Quartet No. 3 in C minor now evoke for me the faintly ominous horn interjections in the opening bars of Dvořák’s New World symphony. Maybe I’m reading more into the music than is really there, but there are certainly plenty of moments where Brahms switches seamlessly from distinctly pianistic writing to simple countermelodies in octaves, and once you start thinking in terms of oboes and clarinets, you too might find it hard to stop.

Having claimed that these are indeed not simply chamber-ised piano concertos, I’d better start talking about Nowak, Budnik and Okamoto. They collectively take the lead for some soaring tuttis in the first movement of the C minor quartet, and expertly handle the handover from the piano in the fiery scherzo - the move from background rustlings to taking centre stage is effortless, for which of course the credit goes to both composer and musicians. Okamoto’s cello-sonata introduction to the exquisite E major slow movement is to die for, and Nowak’s initially diffident countermelody flourishes into the final piece of a gorgeous piano trio. 

The intimate chorale-like string trio passages in the finale are echoed by an almost barbershop-esque lightness in the opening movement of the A major quartet; the strings again have the opportunity to shine as a unit in a beautiful and tender interlude midway through its slow movement. 

I’ll be honest - I was really hoping to be able to draw out some ear-catching viola solo by Katarzyna Budnik, but it’s fair to say that in strictly individualist terms she draws the short straw. At no point in either quartet does she get to step forward and truly command the stage. Indeed, in the opening of the final movement, she’s reduced to joining the piano in some relatively simple accompanying material while the violin and cello introduce the melody!

Fortunately there’s far more to chamber music than squabbling over who gets the nice tunes, and these musicians obviously know it. The ensemble (both between the string trio playing as a section and between the quartet as a whole) is impeccable, and every so often I was reminded of that perhaps whimsical view of the piano as a wind section. Those of a more scholarly inclination might know whether there’s any real merit in this…

In a time where many artists are rightly seeking to make profound and urgent statements in their music, I can’t deny that there’s something refreshing, almost escapist, about an album that’s very obviously just been thrown together (albeit flawlessly!) for the sheer pleasure of group music-making. Because they wanted to - for no deeper or worthier reason than that.