Dohnányi: Piano Quintets Nos. 1 & 2

Few composers have achieved greater success with their first published composition than Ernő Dohnányi with his Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 1. Written in 1895 and praised highly by Brahms, who is believed to have organised a Viennese performance shortly afterwards, it heralded the emergence of a major new talent. The harmonic ambiguity of the 1914 Piano Quintet in E flat minor points to the composer’s awareness of ongoing developments in European music. Still underestimated, it ranks among the most important works of Dohnányi’s ‘middle period’.