Recording: Edith Mathis, soprano; Brigitte Fassbaender, alto;
Peter Schreier, tenor; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, bass; Karl
Engel, piano [DG 449 641-2] Published 1884.  Brahms’s return to
the genre of mixed voices with piano accompaniment reflects the
more mature style heralded by the masterpieces of the late 1870s
and early 1880s.  These quartets are quite different from the
earlier dialogue-based quartets and duets (including the
Liebeslieder and Neue Liebeslieder waltzes), and are more
tightly argued than the first two of the Op. 64 quartets, with
which they share aesthetic similarities. The pieces are
unusually unified in mood, all having a very atmospheric or
nocturnal quality.  They also form a natural complement to the
contemporary unaccompanied part songs, Op. 93a.  Some of these
also share the elegiac quality of Op. 92, and both sets end with
a setting of a brief, aphoristic text by Goethe.  The first
quartet is the composer’s penultimate setting of Daumer, the
poet whose words he used more often than