Piano Quartet in A major Op.26 (1861–2)

While the Piano Quartet in G minor Op.25 is so broad in construction that Schoenberg could refer to his orchestral arrangement of it as “Brahms’s Fifth,” the Piano Quartet in A major Op.26 is broader still. It is actually longer than any of the four symphonies. Even so, it is not a potential “Brahms’s Sixth” since it is so much more chamber-music in conception than its G minor companion, less overtly eventful and at the same time masterly in its integration of piano and string textures.

The integrating factor in the first movement, not only texturally but structurally too, is the piano’s opening theme, particularly the little group of five notes in the first and third bars. In fact, the most dramatic event in the exposition is the episode where piano and strings share a fortissimo proclamation of the importance of the opening theme. Much of the second-subject material is introduced with at least a reminder of the five-note motif somewhere in the vicinity. The theme that escapes it is the one that, introduced by strings and repeated by the piano, closes the exposition. Carried on its sprightly dotted rhythm, it either leads into the exposition repeat or penetrates well into the development, where it is sternly displaced by the main theme in C minor – but only to return just before the beginning of the recapitulation. In fact, it assumes such prominence that it takes an extended coda to re-assert, though quietly this time and in A major, the authority of the main theme.

The melodic abundance of the Poco adagio – a true slow movement, unlike the Andante con moto of Op.25 – is integrated largely by the pairs of quavers with which the muted strings accompany the introduction of the E major main theme on the piano. They are there, low on the cello, as eerie arpeggios rise and fall on the una corda piano and they are there again, on the strings but associated with a distant memory of the five-note motif on the piano, just before the latter breaks into the expressive B minor second subject. They are absent from the intimate but mysteriously motivated middle section – perhaps this is what Joachim meant by “ambiguous passion” – but back again on the reprise of the opening section. The roles of the piano and the (now unmuted) strings are reversed here and the main themes are recalled in a different order but the quavers persist (on remuted strings) to the penultimate bar.

Modestly headed Scherzo, the third movement is actually a brilliantly executed combination of scherzo and sonata forms. The opening section is a sonata construction, including first subject in A major on strings in octaves, a second subject in E major on piano, a repeat of the exposition, a development, a recapitulation and a coda. The canonic Trio section in D minor might seem out of place here but only until it incorporates a variant of the theme that opened the Scherzo and which is, in fact, the integrating factor of the whole movement. What, in a different sense, integrates the Finale is the Hungarian-gypsy zest of the opening theme which, though nowhere near as liberated as its counterpart in the Piano Quartet in G minor, projects its impetus through an extraordinary variety of more or less distinguished thematic material into a frenzied animato coda.