Piano quartet. In European classical music, piano quartet denotes a chamber music composition for piano and three other instruments, or a musical ensemble comprising such instruments.
Those other instruments are usually a string trio consisting of a violin, viola and cello. Piano quartets for that standard lineup were written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák and Gabriel Fauré among others. In the 20th century, composers have also written for more varied groups, with Anton Webern's Quartet, opus 22 (1930), for example, being for piano, violin, clarinet and tenor saxophone, and Paul Hindemith's quartet (1938) as well as Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940) both for piano, violin, cello and clarinet. An early example of this can be found in Franz Berwald's quartet for piano, horn, clarinet and bassoon (1819), his opus 1.[1] A rare form of piano quartets consist of two pianos with two players at each piano.
NZSM: Kelburn Quartet: Brahms Piano Quartet no. 3 – mvt III. NZSM: Kelburn Quartet: Mozart Piano Quartet no. 1 – mvt I.