LDV61

16 BRAHMS_PIANO QUINTET IN F MINOR OP.34 / KLAVIERSTÜCKE OP.76 Twenty-four compositions comprise Brahms’s catalogue of chamber music, which covers more than three decades of creation, from the String Sextet op.18 of 1861 to the Clarinet Sonatas op.120 of 1895. The great majority of works in this corpus make use of the piano. As Brahms’s primary instrument – even over the orchestra, the luxuriant polyphony of which he often conceived using the eighty-eight notes of the keyboard – the piano was the privileged centre of his activity as he moved between solo pieces, chamber music, concertos and symphonies. As with Beethoven, the fact that Brahms was often writing several works at the same time nurtured amusical philosophy that is at once audacious and built on the foundations of classical style.