Benjamin Grosvenor & Friends

Frank Bridge, known as Benjamin Britten's teacher, composed in a late-Romantic, sometimes somewhat French-oriented idiom. His Fantasy is very atmospheric. Schumann, then, is Romanticism at its best; he wrote the piano quartet in 1842 when, as if on an endless whim, he was hurling one chamber music work after another from his pen. A very vital, lyrical work. Brahms makes his appearance as a young man. His First Piano Quartet is almost as romantic as Schumann's - the two were friends - and strikes both darker and lighter tones. Brahms himself must have relished the final rondo. An 'all'ungarese', in Hungarian, meaning gypsy music at the time. Brahms liked to sit in cafés where gypsies would come and play music at your table. This rondo is one of the most exuberant he wrote.