Johannes Brahms, Zehetmair Quartett

For its latest New Series album the Zehetmair Quartett turns to the two string quartets Johannes Brahms published together as Op. 51, in C minor and A minor. Brahms had written some twenty quartets before them and destroyed them all, so these became the first of only three he allowed into print. The recording is also a farewell, the last to feature cellist Christian Elliott, who died in 2025.

The quartet was founded in 1994 by violinist Thomas Zehetmair with violist Ruth Killius, and is known for playing from memory. Here the line-up is completed by second violinist Jakub Jakowicz and Elliott. The recording was made in November 2021 at the Konzerthaus Blaibach, with Rainer Maillard as engineer, Guido Gorna supervising and Manfred Eicher producing. It follows the group's ECM recordings of Schumann, Hindemith, Bartók and Hartmann; Gramophone named their Schumann Record of the Year.

Brahms felt the weight of Beethoven on his C minor works. "You can't have any idea what it's like always to hear such a giant marching behind you!" he once said. In his booklet essay Wolfgang Stähr shows how the first quartet blurs the boundaries between movements by continually developing material already heard, driven by a dotted rhythm. The A minor quartet is more elegiac. Its long opening Allegro non troppo is followed by an Andante moderato, a Quasi minuetto that alternates with a quicker Allegretto vivace, and a finale with a Hungarian accent. Gary Lemco, in Audiophile Audition, heard both works "startlingly refreshed". Zehetmair said of Elliott that the four of them worked together "on the ever-changing character of the voices".

In the Rheinische Post, Wolfram Goertz observed that the two quartets had unexpectedly become a requiem for Elliott. Craig Byrd of Cultural Attaché wrote that "the performances here are first-rate", and Nick Lea in Jazz Views called the disc "a fitting tribute to a wonderful musician". Tyran Grillo, on Between Sound and Space, heard Killius as the steady centre steering both works.

CD edition, ECM New Series 2765, released on 17 October 2025. The booklet has Stähr's essay in German and English and Brahms autograph pages from the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.