Brahms: String Quintets Gringolts Quartet, Lilli Maijala

• Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897): String Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88:
• 1Brahms: String Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88: I. Allegro non troppo ma con brio12:01
• 2Brahms: String Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88: II. Grave ed appassionato — Allegretto vivace — Tempo I — Presto — Tempo I12:19
• 3Brahms: String Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88: III. Allegro energico — Presto05:44
• String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111:
• 4Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111: I. Allegro non troppo, ma con brio13:25
• 5Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111: II. Adagio06:17
• 6Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111: III. Un poco allegretto06:06
• 7Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111: IV. Vivace ma non troppo presto05:30
• Total Runtime01:01:22

Info for Brahms: String Quintets

Johannes Brahms's soul shines through in his chamber music. Following in the footsteps of Mozart and Schubert, Brahms wrote two string quintets that rank among his greatest chamber music masterpieces. He took up this genre rather late in life, but in it he was able to express both the joy and the nostalgia he carried with him into his maturity. The Quintet in F major, Op. 88, held a special place in the composer's heart, and he considered it to be his finest work. A bucolic spirit and a gentle joie de vivre pervade the work, sometimes referred to as the 'spring quintet'. A majestic, pastoral first movement testifies to this cheerfulness, followed by a melancholy movement before the spirited finale. The Quintet in G major, Op. 111, also radiates vigour, expressing the composer's strength, nostalgia and exuberance. With echoes of Viennese folk music, the piece has been referred to as the 'Prater quintet', a reference to the famous Viennese park. These two deep and melancholic works are played by the Gringolts Quartet, whose previous recordings for BIS, particularly those devoted to Arnold Schoenberg's quartets, have won high praise, and who are joined by sought-after Finnish violist Lilli Maijala.

Gringolts Quartet:
Ilya Gringolts, violine
Anahit Kurtikyan, violine
Silvia Simionescu, viola
Claudius Herrmann, violoncello
Lilli Maijala, viola II

Gringolts Quartet
leads his quartet with impressive selflessness, deploying his ardent but tightly focused violin tone to set the outer boundaries of the ensemble sound ... The viola player Silvia Simionescu, in particular, sounded like a kindred spirit to Gringolts, with a burnt umber tone that resembled Jonas Kaufmann’s lower register. But the Gringolts Quartet’s rhythmic drive, its translucency and its cinematic shifts from one dynamic level to another were a collective achievement; and they felt instinctive ... a performance that lays bare the full, sublime vastness of Dvorak’s imagination. The Spectator, 2021

The Zurich-based Gringolts Quartet was born from mutual friendships and chamber music partnerships that cross four countries: over the years, the Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts, the Romanian violist Silvia Simionescu, and the Armenian violinist Anahit Kurtikyan frequently performed together in various chamber formations at distinguished festivals; the German cellist Claudius Herrmann played with Anahit Kurtikyan in the renowned Amati Quartet. In the Gringolts Quartet, the four musicians inspire with their radiant, fused, and at the same time finely differentiated ensemble sound.

The musical partners of the group include artists such as Leon Fleischer, Jörg Widmann, David Geringas, Malin Hartelius, Christian Poltéra, and Eduard Brunner. Aside from classical repertoire for string quartet, they are also dedicated performers of contemporary music, including string quartets by Marc-André Dalbavie, Jörg Widmann, Jens Joneleit, and Lotta Wennäkoski.

The Gringolts Quartet has attracted attention among critics and audiences with their exquisite CD recordings of works by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Together with David Geringas, the Gringolts Quartet participated in the world premiere recording of Walter Braunfels’ quintet in 2012, which was awarded a "Supersonic Award" as well as an ECHO Klassik award. Their CD of quintets by Glazunov and Taneyev with Christian Poltéra was released in the spring of 2016 and was awarded the Diapason d’Or. Jointly with Meta4, a recording with the octets by Mendelssohn and Enescu was published by BIS in 2020 and awarded the Quarterly Prize of the German Record Critics. Also on BIS records, a CD with Schönberg's string quartets Nos. 2 and 4, praised by Klassik Heute as a "reference recording", was released in 2017, "triumphally confirmed" (Rondo, Eleonore Büning) from the release of the second volume with the quartets Nos. 1 and 3 in spring 2022, for which the quartet again received a Diapason d'Or.

The members of the Gringolts Quartet all play on rare Italian instruments: Ilya Gringolts plays a Giuseppe Guarneri "del Gesù" violin, Cremona 1742-43, on loan from a private collection. Anahit Kurtikyan plays a Camillo Camilli violin, Mantua 1733. Silvia Simionescu plays a Jacobus Januarius viola, Cremona 1660. Claudius Herrmann plays a Maggini cello, Brescia 1600. Prince Golizyn, who was a great admirer of Beethoven, gave the first performances of the composer’s last string quartets, which he commissioned, on this instrument

Lilli Maijala
gave her first solo performance with the Oulu Symphony Orchestra at the age of 17 and has since appeared regularly as both a soloist and a chamber musician on stages across Europe.

In recent years she has appeared with orchestras including the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti, Camerata Salzburg, Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen and Tapiola Sinfonietta.

In 2013 she premiered the viola concerto of Lauri Kilpiö with Jyväskylä Sinfonia.

The premiere CD recording of Pehr Henrik Nordgren’s Concerto for viola, double bass and chamber orchestra with the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, conductor Juha Kangas and bass player Olivier Thiery was published in January 2019 with excellent reviews.

Lilli Maijala studied the viola at the Sibelius Academy, Hochschule für Musik Detmold and the Edsberg Chamber Music Institute with teachers such as Teemu Kupiainen, Diemut Poppen and Lars Anders Tomter. A first prize winner of the viola competition Klassik Festival Ruhr, held in conjunction with music academies across Europe, Maijala has won numerous awards, including second prize at the Nordic Vola Competition and special prizes at the ARD Competition Munich and Tokyo International Viola Competition.

Maijala was a member of the critically acclaimed, fearless quartet-lab with cellist Pieter Wispelwey and violinists Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Pekka Kuusisto. Based in Amsterdam, she’s currently dividing her time between the teaching post at the Sibelius Academy and international music festivals as West Cork, IMS Prussia Cove, Resonances, Peasmarsh, Schiermonnikoog. Alongside the Jean Baptiste Vuillaume viola, on loan by kind permission of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Lilli Maijala also performs on baroque viola.

Booklet for Brahms: String Quintets