A curious coupling, you might think, but it's a thought-provoking one: the players almost seem to be challenging the easy assumption that in chamber music Mendelssohn speaks with a reserved and private voice, Shostakovich with a more eloquently public one. The most controversial aspect of their performance of the Shostakovich will be their decision to take the title of the fourth movement—Intermezzo—quite seriously. It is rather fast for a Lento, earnestly lyrical in expression and rises to considerable eloquence at the climax, but it has little of the sombreness even the tragedy, that the other groups listed above find in it. This affects the mood of the finale, of course: plenty of power in reserve for the bigger moments but not much shadow over the development, and when the music of the prelude returns it induces a mood of pensive gravity, not intense disquiet, so the coda can be both enigmatic and genial. On its first appearance that prelude is powerfully declamatory, not portentous, just as the scherzo has great strength (and communicates great enjoyment of its contrasts of texture and character) with few hints of a wild dance of death. The expressive centre of the work for Bingham and the Medici is the fugue, which is beautifully and passionately expressive, but rarely seems to be straining towards an orchestral sonority. The Medici can play as loudly as any of their colleagues, and at times they do, but they inhabit the other end of the dynamic spectrum rather more often; significantly, they do not need to underline the quietness of the opening of the fugue by adopting a white, drawn tone-colour.
The Mendelssohn is just as striking an interpretation, with gestures in the extraordinary slow movement (pounding heartbeats and poignant cries, the emotion eventually sublimated but reluctantly sublimated, one feels—in grave counterpoint) that are as graphic as anything in the Shostakovich. The subdued colour of the third movement is finely imagined, too, and the turbulent finale, spurred on by impassioned Beethovenian recitatives, is an absorbing and satisfying conclusion. It is a fascinating essay, this coupling, on the expressive resources of chamber music, but although I am convinced by and grateful for the demonstration that Shostakovich's Quintet is chamber music, I think I should need a more dramatic account of it (a more exaggerated one you might say) as well. Any of those listed above would do: Richter and the Borodin Quartet (EMI) provide perhaps the finest of all the large-scale readings, and their coupling (Shostakovich's Seventh and Eighth Quartets) is well chosen. The Borodin Trio and colleagues (Chandos) are on a still larger scale, their coupling is a gripping and ferociously 'public' account of the Second Piano Trio. Ashkenazy and the Fitzwilliam (Decca), a bit closer to Bingham and the Medici in manner, offer an outstanding perfommance (with Elisabeth Soderstrom ) of the Seven Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok. But I should also want this new performance, its view of the work strikes me as perfectly valid, and its coupling, far from being eccentric, is one that will make you think afresh about the Shostakovich every time you hear it. The recording is excellent.'