Fine as it is, this recording from the Mistry Quartet falls well short of displacing the Medici's gloriously and eloquently voiced realization of these works for Meridian, certainly Elgar's greatest achievements in the chamber music genre. As MEO observed in these columns in June 1986, the Medici's performances are ''a splendid reminder of just how much passion, boldness and grand, sweeping power these works contain''.
The Elgar Quartet, the A minor Piano Quintet and the E minor Violin Sonata were composed simultaneously during the closing months of 1918, when the composer's poor health and withdrawal from public life had prompted an unprecedented degree of introspective self-criticism. The distant privacy, then, of the Elgar Quartet draws upon melancholia and longing nostalgia before mere bravura. The Mistry players certainly bring spirit and energy in abundance to this music, but the exploratory probings of the first movement require more inner perception than outward flair, although there is much to admire in the sheer impetus of the playing here. Turning to the central Piacevole movement the advantages of the earlier Medici disc could hardly be more apparent, and it has to be said that the tenderness and vital sensitivity to each expressive level merely highlight the relative indiscretions of the new account. A straightforward comparison of the two versions in that sinister ponticello passage of the finale again demonstrates the greater degree of imagination and flexibility which is so very typical of the Medici's playing. Sadly, the superficial elan and brilliance of the Mistry are revealed ultimately as oddly indiscriminate musical gestures.
The Mistry are joined by David Owen Norris for the Op. 84 Piano Quintet, in an excellently sustained and sumptuous performance. Norris is quite the equal of the erudite John Bingham, at least in terms of fervour and command of musical rhetoric, but one could wish for greater amplitude and penetration at major climaxes. Even so, the Mistry players are not totally convincing in the Nobilmente processional of the Adagio, although Susan Monks's imploring cello contribution deserves credit. In the final analysis, this performance sounds unyielding alongside that of Bingham and the Medici. Perhaps these skilled young players would do well to return to this repertoire in 20 years or so, but meanwhile the Medici disc is one that I should be very happy to live with.'