The prize-winning Keller Quartet have already given us Tchaikovsky's First and Second Quartets (also on Erato), and I was glad to acquaint myself with this well-recorded CD (sniffs included), which completes a worthy cycle. The general approach is warm and intelligent, with sensitive phrasing and sympathetic voicing: it's a pleasing tonal blend, one that sounds particularly well when augmented, as in the exuberant Souvenir de Florence.
The expansive Third Quartet is not an easy work to bring off; its 16-minute first movement requires considerable force of argument, while the Andante funebre's chant-like episodes demand both imaginative handling and an ability to sustain long phrases. The Keller certainly deliver on the second count: theirs is a poignant, if not particularly intense, reading of the third movement—but for the rest, the Borodin still win hands down. The Borodin's recent two-disc Teldec set certainly has more tension, the greater textural fibre and a rhythmic boldness that engages one's interest whenever the arguments intensify. Much the same might be said in the case of the Souvenir de Florence, although I loved the newer performance's soft-grained projection of the first movement's gently flowing second set.
It's a pity that the Borodin's latest recordings of Tchaikovsky's three quartets, Quartet Movement and Souvenir are not available separately, especially as they have an authority and sense of mission that give this still underrated music its best chance. Good as they are, the Keller have yet to reach those extraordinarily high standards.'