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Antonín Dvořák's Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, op. 81, B. 155, is a quintet for piano, 2 violins,...

Antonín Dvořák's Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, op. 81, B. 155, is a quintet for piano, 2 violins, viola, and cello. It was composed between August 18 and October 8 of 1887, and was premiered in Prague on January 6, 1888. The quintet is acknowledged as one of the three masterpieces in the form (the others being those of Schumann and Brahms). The work was actually composed as the result of the composer’s attempt to revise an earlier work, Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 5. Dvořák was dissatisfied with the Op. 5 quintet and destroyed the manuscript not long after its premiere. Fifteen years later, he reconsidered and retrieved a copy of the score from a friend and started making revisions. However, he decided that rather than submitting the revised work for publication, he would compose an entirely new work. The new quintet is a mixture of Dvorak's personal form of expressive lyricism as well as a utilization of elements from Czech folk music. Characteristically those elements include styles and forms of song and dance, but not actual folk tunes; Dvorak created original melodies in the authentic folk style. The music has four movements: It has a duration of approximately 40 minutes.