Gernsheim: The Piano Quintets

Following the release of two of Friedrich Gernsheim’s symphonies, cpo presents two piano quintets by this composer whose life was very much of European stamp. His first Piano Quintet quite audibly moves along paths marked out by Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor, composed twelve years before. The second Piano Quintet, composed in the year of Brahms’s death, is precisely in the key of B minor and 6/8 time for the first movement – just as in Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet – certainly to be understood as paying Brahms tribute. The Bohemian theme heard in the Scherzo of op. 63 honored the works’ dedicatees.