Brahms: String Quartets Nos. 1 - 3

Long paralysed by Beethoven’s overwhelming shadow, Johannes Brahms hesitated for a long time before venturing into the genre of the string quartet, producing numerous attempts that were either abandoned or destroyed. It was not until he had reached full maturity that he dared to publish his first compositions. Their relative austerity and strict formal discipline have at times kept them at a distance from the public, although they contain many wonders and are among Brahms’s most profound and intimate works. The Britten Quartet approaches these pieces with a frankness of tone and a genuine dramatic tension that reveals all their beauty. This album brings to a close our retrospective dedicated to this major string quartet, whose superb EMI discography is now fully available on streaming and download platforms.