A piano quintet is a chamber musical ensemble made up of one piano and four other instruments, or the name of a piece written for such a group.
The most common grouping is one piano, two violins, a viola, and a cello—that is, a piano with a string quartet. This combination of instruments is sufficiently prevalent in classical music that when the phrase piano quintet is used without qualification, it usually refers to this particular group.
Several composers have written piano quintets, although few have written more than one, a rare exception being Gabriel Fauré, who wrote two. Other composers to have written for the usual grouping of a string quartet plus piano include Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák (who also wrote more than one, though only the second is played with any regularity), and Dmitri Shostakovich. Franz Schubert's famous Trout Quintet is written for the less usual combination of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven both wrote pieces for a piano and four wind instruments (oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon in both cases). Although these pieces could be called piano quintets, they are more often referred to as "quintets for piano and wind" so as to distinguish them from pieces with the more usual instrumentation.
The Piano Quintet in G Minor, opus 57, by Dmitri Shostakovich is one of his best known chamber works. Like most piano quintets, it is written for piano and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello).
Shostakovich began work on the piece in the summer of 1940 and completed it on September 14 of the same year. It was written for the Beethoven Quartet, as were most of his string quartets, and premiered by them with Shostakovich himself at the piano on November 23 1940 at the Moscow Conservatory, to great success. In 1941 it was awarded the Stalin Prize.
The quintet is in five movements:
The Piano Quintet by Robert Schumann was written in 1842. It is in the key of E flat major and is his opus 44. Like most piano quintets, it is written for piano and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello).
The Piano Quintet in F minor, opus 34, by Johannes Brahms was completed during the summer of 1864. It was dedicated to Her Royal Highness the Princess Anne of Hesse. Like most piano quintets, it is written for piano and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello).
The piece is in four movements:
The work began life as a string quintet (completed in 1862 and scored for two violins, viola and two cellos). Brahms transcribed the quintet into a sonata for two pianos (in which form Brahms and Carl Tausig performed it) before taking its final form. Brahms destroyed the original version for string quintet, but published the Sonata as opus 34 bis. The outer movements are more adventurous than usual in terms of harmony and are unsettling in effect. The introduction to the finale, with its rising figure in semitones, is especially remarkable. Both piano and strings play an equally important role throughout this work.
