String Quintet No. 2 (Brahms) String Quintet No. 2 (Brahms) String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111, is a work by Johannes Brahms published in 1890. It is known as the "Prater" Quintet. Brahms intended it to be his last piece of music, though he later produced a number of piano pieces and the two sonatas for clarinet or viola and piano. The first performance of the Quintet in Vienna on November 11, 1890 was a sensation (Swafford 1997, p. 568). Like Brahms' earlier string quintet, Opus 88, it is a viola quintet, scored for two violins, two violas and cello. The work
String Quintet in E major, Op. 11, No. 5 (Boccherini) the viola and celli have eighth note pizzicato. The second violin, on the other hand, has quick sixteenth note slurs which contain many string crossings. As Elisabeth Le Guin puts it in "Boccherini’s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology", “The second violinist has no time for "galanterie"; he must concentrate on keeping the constant string crossings reasonable even through the length of the bow”. The arrangements of this quintet, especially of the minuet, are extremely numerous. The entire piece was arranged for a double viola quintet in the 18th century. A 19th century transcription of the minuet for the organ