Brahms: Piano Quartets Nos. 2 & 3

Lars Vogt, who died at age 51, founded the Spannungen festival for chamber music in Heimbach, NRW, Germany. Vogt gave his last concert there, playing Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 3 with Christian Tetzlaff, Barbara Buntrock and Tanja Tetzlaff in June 2022. Vogt had attempted to record the Piano Quartets No. 2 and 3, but only the No.2 was complete at the time of his death. To fulfill Vogt’s wish to release this project, his live concert performance of the Quartet No.3 from Spannungen has been added to the studio recording, together representing the late pianist’s final recordings. Christian Tetzlaff comments, “written by Brahms as a piece dealing with a man’s death and most likely reflecting on the passing of Robert Schumann – [the Piano Quartet No. 3] serves as a memorial piece in this sense. Brahms expresses this in a desperate life situation, and we do the same with our interpretation of this piece for our friend Lars.”