Wilhelm Berger was a close contemporary of Richard Strauss‚ but a post­Brahmsian rather than a post­Wagnerian. He died young (in 1911‚ at the age of 50)‚ was mourned as much for his piano playing and conducting (he directed the famous Meiningen orchestra for eight years) as for his composing‚ and he seems to have been fastidiously reluctant to promote his own music. His style is fundamentally Brahmsian‚ saved from mere derivativeness by a quirky individuality. There is something arrestingly odd about each movement of his Piano Quintet‚ quite apart from the agreeable flamboyance of some of its keyboard writing. In the big‚ sonata­form opening movement Berger takes the great risk of a serenely singing second subject which is very much slower than the boldly striding first. The risk is that the music will lose momentum or fatally slacken whenever the second idea returns‚ but Berger’s resourceful transformations of his material keep you listening even when an apparent coda arrives eight minutes before the end. The slow variation movement contains so much contrast and lyrical expansion that you’ll need at least a second hearing to work out how many variations there are‚ while the scherzo‚ which lacks a trio and seems to be in sonata form‚ is in fact monothematic‚ its main idea having so much energy that it generates subsidiary ‘quasi­themes’ as it proceeds. Strangest of all is the finale‚ which begins as a ‘homage­to­Brahms’ passacaglia‚ then begins to vary the theme itself and eventually turns into a finely controlled‚ strikingly imaginative fantasy. Berger clearly does not deserve his current neglect‚ and there are 104 other works by him yet to be investigated. If even some of them are of this quality‚ and if they were to be performed as full­bloodedly as this Quintet‚ a Berger revival would be distinctly possible‚ and most welcome. An excellent‚ clean but spacious recording too.