Johannes Brahms' first two string quartets, the two works of Opus 51, were released for public consumption in 1873. These are not actually his first efforts in the genre—we know that he tried his hand at well over a dozen string quartets as a younger man (none of which met with his approval and all of which were eventually scrapped)—and yet, Brahms spent the better part of a decade working on Op. 51. We know that Op. 51/1, in C minor was begun all the way back in 1865, and while the date that Brahms began incubating material, privately or on paper, for the String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51/2, is less clear, it is unlikely that he would spend eight years on Op. 51/1, and then dash Op. 51/2, off in a matter of days. If he did work on them simultaneously for any great length of time, the achievement becomes perhaps even greater, for the two works are really as different from one another as night and day. The C minor work is as rhythmically compact, note efficient, and, in its outer movements, forward-driven as anything Brahms ever wrote. The A minor quartet, which Brahms dedicated to his friend the Viennese surgeon and amateur string player Theodor Billroth, is, on the other hand, composed along altogether more lyric lines (but by no means less dramatic lines).

The four movements of Op. 51/2, are: 1. Allegro non troppo, 2. Andante moderato, 3. Quasi Minuetto, moderato—Allegretto vivace, and 4. Allegro non assai. There is a spaciousness to parts of the opening Allegro non troppo that would have had no place in the first movement of the C minor quartet. The opening of the first theme, with its four espressivo, even perhaps wistful, half notes in the first violin (the pitches are A-F-A-E, probably a reference to Joseph Joachim's motto "FAE: Frei aber einsam" [freely, but solitary]), certainly has plenty of room—both rhythmically and intervallically, in it; and the C major second theme, with its mezza voce, grazioso parallel thirds, is gemütlichkeit (sociable warmth), if ever chamber music has known it.

After the rich A flat major Romanze first movement of Op. 51/2, Brahms provides the A minor quartet with an Andante moderato slow movement in A major that is, by comparison, gossamer-textured. In a central episode, heated tremolos and firm, marcato declarations from the first violin and cello move the movement strangely close to the idioms of opera for a short time. The minuet is quietly—and mostly homophonically—scored (the open fifth drone in the cello is a wonderful and peculiar touch); the Allegretto vivace music runs along in happy sixteenth notes. The finale is more graceful than headstrong, and even the strong hemiola pattern of the main tune sounds almost as if borrowed from the dance hall.

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