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No, I'm not joking. Almost every single chamber work that Brahms completed is at least the equal of the best that Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn ever produced. If I were to list what I consider to be great chamber masterpieces, I would include two to four pieces each by the latter three composers... and all but two to four pieces from Brahms's entire chamber music output. Listen to his piano quintet, any of his three piano quartets, his horn trio, his clarinet quintet, his first string sextet, either of his first two string quartets... that's just off the top of my head. Not a dull moment in any of them... and each piece is epic in scale, which is incredibly hard to do with a small ensemble. Brahms had a gift for compressing incredible amounts of musical material into compact, coherent forms. Most of Brahms's chamber works can hold my attention for their entire length, 40 minutes to over an hour. I can only say the same for a few chamber works by Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn.
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Andrew Hsieh
Medical Student and Composer
View my profile
The piano quartet is COMPLETE!!!
Please note that I will not review the following without a very good reason:
1) MP3-only posts: no score + outside link = bad deal. Especially true because I'm on dialup when at home.
2) Shoutbox or PM spam: excessive shameless plugs get very annoying very fast.
3) Pieces written in a short time or with little effort: if it's not worth the composer's time and energy, then it's not worth mine either.
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