Leonskaja and the Alban Berg Quartet face considerable competition here, and not least quantatively, from Ranki and colleagues on Hungaroton/Conifer who by not repeating first movement expositions find room for Brahms's Clarinet Quintet as well. If only the Hungarian recording matched the fine musical warmth of the playing! But the string tone, in particular, betrays its age. Neither Pollini (DCr) nor Previn (Philips), with their respective colleagues, are so generous: on these two discs Brahms's Op. 34 has to suffice. But I greatly enjoyed the noble breadth of the Italian performance even if Pollini's imperious piano playing dominates the scene, just as I also did the close-knit, finely balanced ensemble and unidiosyncratic truthfulness to the letter of the score that we're given by Previn and the Musikverein. So where do the newcomers stand?
Unlike their rivals, they were recorded at a concert, enthusiastically applauded before and after Brahms's quintet as also after their encore, which one of the team personally announces. And I think the presence of an audience accounts for the highly-strung urgency of their playing. In the Scherzo (the fastest of the four readings) this is an advantage. Pollini and Previn in particular emerge over-deliberate in comparison (though I love the ripely Brahmsian trio melody from the Italians). But in the Andante, un poco Adagio (again the fastest of the four readings) the newcomers are a shade too fast, and they also over-react to passing moments of poco accelerando and poco stringendo just before the central move into E major. At the outset I also thought the strings not only too forward, but inclined to over-emphasize the slurs in their accompanying quavers. In this movement I'm sure it's the less self-consciously point-making and more artfully balanced Previn and the Musikverein who come nearest to the music's own Schubertian simplicity. As for the two big flanking movements I think honours are fairly equally divided in tie first. In the last, the newcomers are the most excitably impressionable, extracting the maximum poignancy from the poco sostenuto introduction by means of a slower speed than that of all but Pollini and his compatriots, and making the most of every tempo change to enhance mood contrasts in what follows. Though less volatile, here it is Previn and his team who remind us that the introduction is in fact marked with an alla breve time signature, and who avoid subsequent extremities of change (such as in the un pochettino piu animato lead into the second subject) in the interests of overall Brahmsian cohesion.
Besides applause, we are also given the bonus of the ''Dumka'' in the new EMI recording—making a total of some 56 minutes as against the Philips (Previn) 41. 1 only wish that Leonskaja and the Berg had allowed themselves yet another minute or two in the interests of stronger characterization in Dvorak's winning slow movement—like Richter and the Borodins in a cherished old performance on Philips (nla). Here the music struck me as slightly thrown away. But it's an arresting record all the same, vividly reproduced.'