After the first volume which was awarded a "Diapason d’Or", Mariani Klavierquartett continues its journey of discovery, juxtaposing the piano quartets of Johannes Brahms and Friedrich Gernsheim. Although this second album is dominated by Brahms’s luminescent A-Major Quartet – his longest – and although the friendship of the two composers stands at the center of this three-part project, Gernsheim’s F-Major Quartet shows that not only Brahms numbered among his influences, but that Gernsheim was also able to blend echoes of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert into a convincing personal style. In the hands of the Mariani Piano Quartet, the formal perfection of his fervent work gleams with undreamt-of power. © Audax Records