Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1, Symphony No. 3 – The Schoenberg Effect

The young German Notos Quartet received excellent reviews worldwide for its first album “Hungarian Treasures” (jpc 5847005) with the world premiere recording of Béla Bartok’s piano quartet – and immediately the ECHO Klassik as “Young Artist of the Year”.

Their new recording for Sony Classical – this time with music by Johannes Brahms – also contains a premiere recording: the arrangement of Brahms’ Third Symphony created by composer Andreas N. Tarkmann especially for the Notos Quartet. To a certain extent, Arnold Schoenberg pointed the way to the arrangement of the symphony by arranging Brahms’ Piano Quartet op. 25 for orchestra. The Notos Quartet takes the opposite path and wants to show the chamber music dimension in Brahms’ third symphony: “Suddenly, structures never heard before open up, leading to a new and passionate listening impression – a symbiosis of symphonic sound bed and chamber music clarity and a proof of Brahms’ supreme compositional mastery”, says the Notos Quartet. And of course the Notos Quartet has also recorded the famous Piano Quartet op. 25 for this album.