This Piano Quartet was written when Brahms was still in his twenties, but for the Viennese critic Hanslick it lay at the centre of his art and was a natural successor to Beethoven's last chamber music. However, Hanslick did not reach this judgement quickly, having been cool to the work at first, and for that matter his view of late Beethoven had puzzlement as well as admiration. This work too has its ambiguities and elusiveness. According to W. W. Cobbett in his survey of chamber music (London: 1929), ''its serenity is Olympian'', and while not disagreeing with that I still find it hard to characterize the work in relation to other Brahms.
This performance, recorded in Prague last year, has the right kind of gravity, not least in the subtle first movement. The Poco adagio, in E major, presents its main theme in the kind of heterophony (between violin and piano) that we associate more readily with oriental music and Britten's borrowings therefrom: but here as elsewhere we feel a mood, hesitant and elegiac, that is curiously Brahmsian. Yet paradoxically melody, harmony and texture are often rich. After these movements, more brilliance is clearly called for, and this the composer gives in some measure in the scherzo and a kind of 'gipsy rondo' finale.
Overall the work may remain a little subfusc for some tastes, but it is a noble one. Good playing and very little audience noise until the final applause, but the recording is somewhat lacking in fullness and bloom.'