One of the first meetings with chamber music in the new season will feature eminent instrumentalists of various nationalities – violinists Julian Rachlin and Radosław Pujanek, violist Sarah McElrava, cellist Boris Andrianov and pianist José Gallardo. In their interpretation, we will hear piano quintets from the Romantic era by Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann, who had a strong connection, both privately and professionally.

“And so he was born, bringing in fresh blood, with graces and heroes watching over the cradle. His name is Johannes Brahms,” announced Robert Schumann in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in October 1853, after hearing the young artist present his piano works during one of his private recitals. This meeting was an important event in the biographies of both composers. The friendship between the musicians had an impact on their work – they composed pieces of the same genres, also in chamber music.

Piano Quintet in F minor op. 34 by Johannes Brahms was created in the years 1862–1864, when Brahms, after leaving his native Hamburg, settled in Vienna. The work is considered to be one of the most important and, at the same time, the most beautiful pieces of chamber music. Here the fullness of Romantic expression intersects with Classical patterns, which makes the composition so attractive in reception. Piano quintet in E flat major op. 44 by Robert Schumann was composed almost twenty years earlier, in the first years of his happy marriage with the pianist and composer Clara Wieck. The composition was dedicated to her, and Clara took part in its premiere during a concert at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig in January 1843. The quintet went down in history as a gem of Romantic ecstasy and, at the same time, prof of its author’s excellent craft. Enthusiastically received by the audience, it is the first of in the line of great quintets by such composers as Brahms, Franz Schubert, and César Franck.