The Keller Quartet—named for its founder, the violinist András Keller—rose to international prominence in the 1990s when they won the Évian and Borciani competitions. Made up of solo artists passionate about chamber music, the Keller Quartet is animated by a spirit of boundless curiosity that leads them to a great variety of repertoire, from Bach to Bartók and everywhere in between. In 1994, the ensemble turned their focus to the work of Brahms, performing the full set of the composer's string quartets in Munich.
Haunted by the imposing specter of Beethoven, the perfectionistic and self-critical Brahms is thought to have written and destroyed almost two dozen quartets, leaving behind only three for posterity. He composed this first extant quartet, Op. 51, in C major at the age of 40. Already advanced in his career, he reveals here the extraordinary creativity of a seasoned artist who also sought inspiration in the classic forms of his predecessors: a captivating Brahmsian mix straddling the worlds of tradition and modernity.
