The Paris-based group’s first disc is a wonderfully detailed recording of Brahms quartets that at times might benefit from a more muscular edge Quatuor Agate owe their name to Brahms – taking it from ...

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, ...

Now in its 19th year, South Korea’s leading string quartet, Novus Quartet, continues its ambitious musical journey with the release of a new album, "Brahms: The Complete String Quartets." The group’s ...

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 ...

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 ...

'These are not comfortable performances’, Rob Cowan wrote in his review of the Zehetmair Quartet’s 2003 Gramophone Award-winning album of Schumann string quartets. And Rob’s words ring true for the ...

Musica Tra Amici (Music Among Friends) will have their first concert of 2022. For this chamber music concert, Artistic Director and Houston Symphony co-concertmaster, Eric Halen, will be joined by his ...

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 ...

On the other hand I immediately felt how hard it would be to come close to this “truth”. In all of Brahms’s music there is this element of something elusive and unreachable. Deeply inspired by this ...

String quartets are among the hardiest and most adaptable of musical organisms. As mobile as rock bands, in some ways even more so, they can appear, do their thing, and slip away into the night. Small ...