Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.

4 Quartets, Op. 92 {1877 ca. (No.1), 1884 ca. (Nos.2-4)}

1. O schöne Nacht! Andante con moto (E major)
Georg Friedrich Daumer (1800–1875)
2. Spätherbst. Andante (e minor)
Hermann Allmers (1821–1902) (3:27)
3. Abendlied. Andante (F major)
Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863) (4:55)
4. Warum? Lebhaft (B♭ major)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) (7:11)

Kansas-City Chorale conducted by Charles Bruffy
Cynthia Siebert, piano

Brahms’s return to the genre of mixed voices with piano accompaniment reflects the more mature style heralded by the masterpieces of the late 1870s and early 1880s. These quartets are quite different from the earlier dialogue-based quartets and duets (including the Liebeslieder and Neue Liebeslieder waltzes), and are more tightly argued than the first two of the Op. 64 quartets, with which they share aesthetic similarities. The pieces are unusually unified in mood, all having a very atmospheric or nocturnal quality. They also form a natural complement to the contemporary unaccompanied part songs, Op. 93a. Some of these also share the elegiac quality of Op. 92, and both sets end with a setting of a brief, aphoristic text by Goethe. The first quartet is the composer’s penultimate setting of Daumer, the poet whose words he used more often than any other. One of his most gorgeous creations, the quartet’s rapturous harmonies and gloriously illustrative piano writing set it apart, as does its exceedingly romantic mood. The second quartet is as melancholy as the first is rapt. Its distinctive, turning triplet melody exudes sadness and regret, although there is a hopeful major-key ending. The third quartet returns to the warmly nocturnal mood of the first, including the adventurous harmonies at the end of the second stanza and the magnificent ending, whose decreasing activity without decreasing speed is a trademark Brahmsian technique. The final Goethe setting uses unstable harmonies, restless rhythms, and intricate counterpoint to set its titular question. The response, which sets most of the poem in a new meter and tempo, transforms a melodic figure heard near the end of the “question” section and turns it into the main melody of the “answers.”

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