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 Tannhäuser performances, and became acquainted with Rossini, Saint-Saëns, and Lalo – important positions in Saarbrücken, 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 Gernsheim’s sensuously indulging C minor Quartet alongside perhaps the 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.