La Gaia Scienza – Brahms op.60, op.34 (CD, Winter and Winter)

In spite of his usually reserved nature, Brahms revealed several details concerning the emotional background to his Piano Quartet in C Minor. To the music scholar Hermann Deiters he suggested that he pictures, when listening to this work, a man “who simply wants to blow his brains out”. To his friend Theodor Billroth he described it as an illustration of “the last chapter of the man with the blue tailcoat and the yellow vest”. And to his publisher Simrock he suggested – not without sarcasm – as a design for the cover page a head “with a pistol pointed towards it”, and even offered a photograph of himself for that purpose.