Piano quintet

In classical music, a piano quintet is a work of chamber music written for piano and four other instruments. The genre particularly flourished in the nineteenth century.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the instrumentation most frequently consisted of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Following the phenomenal success of Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44 in 1842, which paired the piano with a string quartet (i.e., two violins, viola, and cello), composers began to adopt Schumann's instrumentation. Among the most frequently performed piano quintets, aside from Schumann's, are those by Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák and Dmitri Shostakovich.