Brahms Piano Quartet in G Minor (+Schoenberg!)

Today I’m going to be talking about one piece, but in two
different ways.  I’m going to start today with an in-depth
look at Brahms’ Piano Quartet in G Minor, an early piece of his
that reveals an incredible sense of drama, drive, and creativity.
This is very different music than I’ve talked about before with
Brahms as this is decidedly the work of a young composer, without
all the burnished maturity of Brahms’ later music. This is also a
great opportunity to revisit the bedrock of the Classical and
Early Romantic eras, Sonata Form, a form that makes so many
pieces from those eras intelligible and clear. 


But I’m also going to be talking about another piece. Well, it’s
the same piece, but to some people, it sounds so completely
different that it constitutes a completely new piece entirely. To
some others, myself included, it almost constitutes an entirely
new Brahms symphony. What I’m talking about is the composer
Arnold Schoenberg’s arrangement of Brahms’s Piano Quartet for a
massive orchestra, filling the stage with instruments that Brahms
never would have even conceived of! You don’t often think of
Schoenberg and Brahms in the same breath, but Schoenberg was a
devotee of Brahms’ music, and often defended him against those
who called him a crusty old conservative composer. But Schoenberg
was still Schoenberg, and this arraangement of the quartet
reflects that in a lot of ways. So along with an exploration of
Sonata Form, I’ll save a look at the Schoenberg arrangement for
the end of th show, since this is a great chance to look at
orchestration and how a composer takes a piece written for 4
people and transforms it into a piece for 100. So today we’ll
dive into this vast and complex piece, and along they way we’ll
visit Schoenberg’s fascinating and sometimes downright wacky
arrangement.  Join us!