Brahms: Intermezzo

Perahia and the Amadeus Quartet feast on Brahms’s First Piano Quartet like a pack of wolves that has finally felled a juicy elk. After a ravenous romp through its opening movement, and the snarling sinews of the second movement “Intermezzo,” one would expect a respite for digestion, but even the Andante third movement (more vigorous than most Brahms slow movements, but the slowest of the four) is imbued with carnivorous zeal. All of it is a prelude to the fourth movement “Rondo alla zingarese,” a rabid feeding frenzy in which the pecking order devolves into a tooth-and-nail melee for the last marrow on the bone. Amid the wreckage of broken bow hairs, rosin dust, and Perahia’s cuticles looms the specter of Arnold Schoenberg, whose red-blooded 1937 orchestration of the work undeniably influenced the bruising, orchestral proportions of this performance. (The four solo Perahia performances that round out the album are hardly table scraps. Even as a lone wolf, Perahia is a heckuva hunter.)