JOHANNES BRAHMS

“All Brahms’s chamber music is fantastic – the sonatas, the trios, the Clarinet Quintet. There is no bad piece among them.” (Krystian Zimerman)

Polish-Swiss pianist Krystian Zimerman has teamed up cellist Yuya Okamoto, violinist Maria Nowak and violist Katarzyna Budnik for an album of Brahms Piano Quartets released today.

Krystian Zimerman’s passion for chamber music goes back to his childhood and has accompanied him ever since. He states, “every great composer wrote some kind of quartet with piano. It’s a fantastic richness of music history that is often underestimated.” Although Brahms' first piano quartet is the best known of the three, Zimerman instead focuses on the sometimes-overlooked Piano Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 in order to give them the attention they deserve. He adds: “I particularly love the third quartet. It’s crazy. It’s so powerful. It has unbelievable drive.”