An album published on April 4th by Deutsche Grammophon: two piano quartets by Brahms, featuring the Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman.

Krystian Zimerman's name is one of the most important musicians nowadays. Now 68 years old, Zimerman first won international fame in 1975, when he got First Prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, a success that led to his first concert with the Berlin Philharmonic. Since 1977, he has had a contract with Deutsche Grammophon, for he has recorded the great concert repertoire for piano and orchestra, as chamber music.

Moreover, chamber music is one of his great loves, being connected with his childhood memories: Krystian Zimerman's father was an amateur pianist who hosted many musical evenings, in which young Zimerman took part, at the beginning by listening and turning pages, later by playing the piano himself. After his 1975 success, despite a solo career, Zimerman always found time to perform chamber music. Among his long term partners were violinists Kyung-Wha Chung and Gidon Kremer.

On his new album, recorded at the LAC in Lugano in 2023, Krystian Zimerman didnt choose the most famous of Brahms's piano quartets, that is, the first but the next two, less frequently performed, to give them new life.

We are presented with Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 2, work lasting 45 minutes, in which one discovers a performance of great artistry a chamber incorporates that works together organically, with a vision and structure of great strength, four musicians who understand Brahms's message and offer us a universe where intellect and emotion mix together.

With pianist Krystian Zimerman are violinist Maria Nowak, violist Katarzyna Budnik, and cellist Yuya Okamoto.

The four musicians have been performing together as a quartet since 2019. Krystian Zimerman already knew his Polish compatriots, violinist Maria Nowak, concertmaster of the festival orchestra organized by Zimerman himself and active in Berlin, and violist Katarzyna Budnik, principal violist of the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra. Japanese cellist Yuya Okamoto won second prize at the 2017 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, where Krystian Zimerman first heard him, leading to their collaboration beginning in 2019. Since 2024, Yuya Okamoto has been a member of the renowned French Ebene Quartet.

Here we have the quartet with pianist Krystian Zimerman and his friends, performing Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 3, a work that explores the world of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, a reflection of Brahms's love for Clara Schumann.