The String Quartet No. 3 in B flat major, Op. 67, was composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1875 and published by the firm of Fritz Simrock. It received its premiere performance on October 30, 1876 in Berlin. Brahms composed the work in Ziegelhausen, near Heidelberg, and dedicated it to Professor Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann, an amateur cellist who had hosted Brahms on a visit to Utrecht. Brahms was at the time the artistic director of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The work is light-hearted and cheerful. Brahms, being characteristically dismissive, said it was "a useless trifle, to avoid facing the serious countenance of a symphony". A more generous evaluation (of Brahms' friend and violinist Joachim) rightly said that Brahms has "never written such beautiful chamber music as in the D minor movement and the finale, the first full of magical romanticism, the last full of intimacy and grace within a fully artistic framework."

This Urtext edition contains parts for two violins, viola, and cello. Published by G. Henle Verlag.

Difficulty: 4 - 5

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