UNC School of the Arts: The Reynolda Quartet: In The Footsteps of a Giant
Faculty Artist Series // Beethoven cast a long imposing shadow on Johannes Brahms, who waited until he was 40 to publish his first string quartet proclaiming that, “You can’t have any idea what it is like always to hear such a giant marching behind you!” It is no wonder that Brahms’ first quartet Op. 51 No. 1, when it finally came, was such a masterpiece — dark, ambitious, rhythmically complex, and in the tragic C minor key of Beethoven’s great Fifth Symphony.