Piano quartet

A piano quartet is a chamber music composition for piano and three other instruments, or a musical ensemble comprising such instruments.  Those other instruments are usually a string trio consisting of a violin, viola and cello.

Piano quartets for that standard lineup were written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák and Gabriel Fauré among others. In the 20th century, composers have also written for more varied groups, with Anton Webern's Quartet, opus 22 (1930), for example, being for piano, violin, clarinet and tenor saxophone, and Paul Hindemith's quartet (1938) as well as Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940) both for piano, violin, cello and clarinet. An early example of this can be found in Franz Berwald's quartet for piano, horn, clarinet and bassoon (1819), his opus 1.

A rare form of piano quartets consist of two pianos with two players at each piano. This type of ensemble is informally referred to as "eight-hand piano", or "two piano eight hands". Eight-hand piano was popular in the late 19th century before the advent of recordings as it was a mechanism to reproduce and study symphonic works. Music lovers could hear the major symphonic works all in the convenience of a parlour or music hall that had two pianos and four pianists. Many of the popular works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák were transcribed for two piano eight hands. The majority of 8 hand piano music consists of transcriptions, or arrangements.

List of works
The following is an incomplete list of piano quartets by famous and lesser-known composers.

Henk Badings
Piano Quartet (1973)
Béla Bartók
Piano Quartet in C minor (1898)
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Quartet WoO 36, No. 1 in E-flat major (1785)
Piano Quartet WoO 36, No. 2 in D major (1785)
Piano Quartet WoO 36, No. 3 in C major (1785)
Opus 16/b: Piano Quartet in E-flat (1797) (arrangement of Quintet for Piano and Winds, Op. 16)
Charles Auguste de Bériot
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 50 (1881)
Arthur Bliss
Piano Quartet in A minor (1915)
Léon Boëllmann
Piano Quartet in F minor, Op. 10 (c. 1890)
William Bolcom
Piano Quartet (1976)
Johannes Brahms
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (1859)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 26 (1862)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60 (1875)
Frank Bridge
Phantasy Piano Quartet in F-sharp minor, H. 94 (1910)
James Francis Brown
Piano Quartet (2004)
Ernest Chausson
Piano Quartet in A major, Op.30 (1897)
Aaron Copland
Piano Quartet (1950)
Vincent d'Indy
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op.7 (1878–88)
Antonín Dvořák
Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 23 (1875)
Bagatelles, Op. 47 (for two violins, cello and harmonium (or piano); 1878)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 87 (1889)
Danny Elfman
Piano Quartet (2017)
George Enescu
Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 16 (1909)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in D minor, Op. 30 (1943–1944)
Gabriel Fauré
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15 (1876–79, Finale rev. 1883)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45 (1885–86)
Morton Feldman
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello (1987)
John Harbison
November 19, 1828 (1988)
Robert Helps
Piano Quartet (1997)
Alfred Hill
The Sacred Mountain (1932)
Guillaume Lekeu
Piano Quartet in B minor - (incomplete, first and second movement only; 1893)
Lowell Liebermann
Piano Quartet Op.114 (2010)
Gustav Mahler
Piano Quartet in A minor (only 1st movement completed; 1876)
Joan Manén
Piano Quartet Op. A-6 "Mobilis in mobili" (1901)

Heinrich Marschner
Piano Quartet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 36 (1827)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 158 (1853)
Bohuslav Martinů
Piano Quartet, H. 287 (1942)
Felix Mendelssohn
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 1 (1822)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in F minor, Op. 2 (1823)
Piano Quartet No. 3 in B minor, Op. 3 (1825)
Olivier Messiaen
Quatuor pour la fin du temps (for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano; 1941)
Darius Milhaud
Piano Quartet, Op. 417 (1966)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478 (1785)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 493 (1786)
Henrique Oswald
Piano Quartet No. 1 (Piccolo quartetto) in F-sharp minor, Op. 5 (1888)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in G major, Op. 26 (1898)
Walter Piston
Piano Quartet (1964)
Max Reger
Piano Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op.113 (1910)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in A min, Op.133 (1914)
Osmo Tapio Räihälä
Les Oréades (2014)
Camille Saint-Saëns
Piano Quartet in E major, Op. post (1851–53)
Serenade in E-flat major, Op. 15 (for violin, viola (or cello), organ, and piano; 1865)
Piano Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 41 (1875)
Barcarolle in F major, Op. 108 (for violin, cello, harmonium, and piano; 1898)
Franz Schubert
Adagio and Rondo concertante in F major, D487 (1816)
Robert Schumann
Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47 (1842)
Eric Sessler 
Piano Quartet (2004)
Nikos Skalkottas
Scherzo for piano quartet (1939)
Richard Strauss
Piano Quartet in C minor, Op.13 (1884)
Josef Suk
Piano Quartet in A min, Op.1 (1891)
Josef Tal
Piano Quartet for violin, viola, cello & piano (1982)
Sergei Taneyev
Piano Quartet in E major, Op. 20 (1906)
Joaquín Turina
Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 67 (1931)
William Walton
Piano Quartet in D minor
Graham Waterhouse
Skylla and Charybdis (2014)
Carl Maria von Weber
Piano Quartet in B-flat major, J. 76 (1809)
John Williams
Air and Simple Gifts (2009)

See also 
 Classic 100 chamber (ABC)
 Mozart Piano Quartet

References

Further reading 
 Basil Smallman (1994) The Piano Quartet and Quintet: Style Structure, and Scoring, New York: Oxford University Press. .

External links
Piano Quartet Repertoire — A Comprehensive Listing of the piano quartet repertoire by major composers at the New Zealand Piano Quartet website
Ames Piano Quartet
 Public Domain Piano Quartet Scores from IMSLP

Quartet
Category:Chamber music
Category:Types of musical groups
*Piano