Schumann's chamber music embraces three trios, four quartets, and a piano quintet that have, on the whole, received enthusiastic acclaim. The trios have passages and whole movements of great spirit that are characteristic of the composer's best work. The quartets exhibit an "essential beauty" that "has engraved itself deep in the minds of all chamber music lovers" (Cobbetl's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music). And the piano quintet, a pioneering work in this form, is still considered one of the finest such pieces ever written.
All lovers of chamber music and of romantic music will find much to enjoy in this superb collection. Schumann enthusiasts, whose numbers are legion, have a special reason to be pleased: "Schumann's chamber music of 1842 is in many ways among the most perfect of all the products of his genius; the purest and most powerful in its beauty, the strongest in its form, best balanced in its substance, and best adapted in its technical means and processes to the expression of the composer's thought" (Cobbett's).
