Poland’s hopes of widening international awareness of its country’s 19th-century music have long been high on the agenda but, with Chopin tending to overshadow all of his Polish contemporaries as well as his forebears and most of his immediate successors, the task has been an uphill one. All of a sudden, however, the path of persuasion has levelled out somewhat with the appearance of two recordings of the G minor Piano Quintet by Juliusz Zare˛bski (1854-85), a virtuoso pianist and a favourite pupil of Liszt’s.

In their performances of the Zare˛bski and of the C minor Piano Quintet by his slightly older and much longer-lived contemporary Władysław Z˙elen´ski (1837-1921), Jonathan Plowright and the Szymanowski Quartet tackle the scores from the thoroughly justified stance that the music is as far removed from Chopin’s milieu as could be imagined. Zare˛bski toured widely as a concert pianist and had been a student at the Vienna Conservatory; in 1880 he took up a post as professor of piano at the Conservatoire in Brussels, which he occupied until his death from tuberculosis at the age of 31. These connections with cultures beyond the Polish borders manifest themselves in the quintet. The pianism has Liszt’s muscle and his kaleidoscope of keyboard colour; the models for the structure and the integration of piano and strings stem from the Teutonic tradition. The intensity of lyricism coupled with the rhythmic sinew that Zare˛bski is able to flex suggest that he knew his Brahms; but often the piquancy of an idea also suggests some sort of folk inflection in its spice, revealing a composer who not only had a secure instinct for chamber music but who also possessed individuality.

Hyperion’s useful coupling of the Zare˛bski with Z˙elen´ski’s quartet makes the disc specially welcome and the playing is first-rate. The release of Martha Argerich’s DVD with the string players Bartłomiej Nizioł, Agata Szymczewska, Lyda Chen and Alexander Neustroev offers not only the added visual dimension but also a live Warsaw performance that positively sizzles with electric spontaneity, power and passion.