Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25
Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90 (Arranged for piano quartet by Andreas N. Tarkmann)

The catalyst behind this new recording by the Notos Quartet goes back to 1937 when, acting on a request by conductor Otto Klemperer, Arnold Schoenberg wrote an orchestral arrangement of the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). Here they perform this work in its original chamber ensemble setting, and to further demonstrate Schoenberg's precept that this composer's chamber and orchestral music were analogous, they present the world premiere recording of a Piano Quartet version of his Symphony No. 3 in F major. Created specifically for the Notos Quartet, this arrangement, or should we say reverse-engineering, was written by German composer Andreas N. Tarkmann (b. 1956), a specialist in organology (the study of musical instruments in terms of their history and classification) who published a textbook in 2010 titled: "Arranging for Chamber Ensembles".

Like an organ transcription of a Bruckner symphony or a piano reduction of a Beethoven symphony, it pares down the music to its essential core, and presents its skeletal thematic structure in high relief. Individual motivic parts stand out and showcase the composer's clockwork mechanism at work within the score. The members of the Notos Quartet, Sindri Lederer (violin), Andrea Burger (viola), Philip Graham (cello) and Antonia Köster (piano) perform it with such dramatic and dynamic expression as to not lose sight of its scope in the process. In this arrangement the piano part does most of the heavy lifting and in doing so provides the backbone of the score and projects its symphonic breadth, which allows the individual string parts to focus on the leading lines. One can clearly hear the composer's mind at work, especially in how the individual parts come together to form a cohesive whole. From the bold opening chords of the first movement to the soft, nocturnal ending quivers of the final movement, the Notos Quartet always sound engaged and never lose track of the music's portent. I would be curious to hear what they could do with the anguished opening bars of the First Symphony.