The name Mahler is so closely associated with the symphony and Lied genres that it is little known how intensively he applied himself to chamber music during his studies. Of his numerous attempts in this field only one piano quartet composed between 1876 and 1878 has survived – and of this merely the first movement in its entirety.

The latter was only rediscovered in the 1960s and first published in 1973. Even if Brahms is unmistakably his model, the quartet movement contains enough individua...