Gernsheim

In the year of social distancing, the Mariani Piano Quartet dedicates itself to a today almost forgotten friendship and embarks with Audax Records upon a voyage of discovery in which the piano quartets of Johannes Brahms are juxtaposed with those by Friedrich Gernsheim. Gernsheim, a child prodigy trained at the renowned Leipzig Conservatory, occupied after a sojourn of several years in Paris, where he experienced the scandal-ridden Tannhauser performances, and became acquainted with Rossini, Saint-Saens, and Lalo important positions in Saarbrucken, Berlin, Cologne, and Rotterdam. Mahler and Strauss held him in high regard and conducted his music. However, after his death his musical legacy fall victim to the anti-Semitic climate in Europe. On the first album of a three-part series, the Mariani Piano Quartet presents Gernsheims sensuously indulging C-Minor Quartet alongside the perhaps best-known work of the genre: the Piano Quartet in G Minor, op. 25, by Brahms with its unbridled energy and symphonic radiance. An intoxicating journey through time into the Romantic period in a captivating interpretation.

Friedrich Gernsheim (1839–1916), born in Worms, on the Rhine, grew up to be one of the most formidable musicians of his age: composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. Even as a teenager, Gernsheim was attracting attention as a virtuoso-composer, earning comparisons with Mozart. The works here document the emergence of his own musical personality, from an early sonata, which has a Mozartian opening and a Beethovenian slow movement, via a dalliance with Schumann, until he reaches a mature style comparable to Brahms in its emotional range and depth.