Brahms Piano Quintet No 1; String Quartet No 1
Can Brahms help the Ebènes repeat their Gramophone Awards success?
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Johannes Brahms
Genre:
Chamber
Label: Virgin
Magazine Review Date: 13/2009
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: 216622-2
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
String Quartet No. 1 |
Johannes Brahms, Composer
Ébène Quartet Johannes Brahms, Composer |
Quintet for Piano and Strings |
Johannes Brahms, Composer
Akiko Yamamoto, Piano Ébène Quartet Johannes Brahms, Composer |
Author: David Threasher
The Takács Quartet also offer a rival recording of the C minor String Quartet (their Hyperion remake, which follows almost two decades after their first recording for Decca, 9/90R). While both the Ebène and the Takács match each other for unanimity and strength of ensemble, it is consistently the Takács who pip their younger French counterparts in terms of forward thrust and far-sighted structural awareness, demonstrating a more secure sense of the work’s inexorable momentum. One feels that the French ensemble’s less febrile approach may find its true home in the playful neoclassicism of Brahms’s Third Quartet.
With regret, though, this is not a Brahms chamber music disc of choice. But when the Ebène offer their own remake of this music 20 years hence, they will surely then demonstrate why this music from Brahms’s first flush of success so richly repays exploration with the benefit of a wisdom and experience that are born of greater maturity.
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