In his two String Quartets op. 51, Johannes Brahms deliberately chose to deal with the demands of this classical genre. An echo of Beethoven's Razumovsky Quartets (op. 59) is particularly unmistakable.

Moreover, in the formal treatment of the two works, Brahms aimed to cyclically round off the overall form through motivic references to the respective main theme.
After various preliminary phases in the 1860s, Brahms wrote the two Quartets op. 51 in Tutzing on Lake Starnberg in the summer of 1873. The second work presented here was given its first public performance at the Berliner Singakademie on 18 October 1873. The first violin part was played by Brahms' violinist friend Joseph Joachim.

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