Expert as their playing is, the Brodsky seem less in tune with Haydn and Mozart than they did with Shostakovich in their memorable cycle for Teldec (6/92). The performances here are carefully conceived and enjoyable up to a point. But they yield to both rival ensembles listed above in colour, character and imaginative insight. In the outer movements of the Hunt, for instance, the Brodsky sound dogged and earthbound beside the Alban Berg, who offer lither, springier rhythms, a more subtle tonal palette and keener feeling for the music’s grace and wit. And while the Adagio is sensitively phrased and timed by the Brodsky, it has little of the rapt inwardness distilled by the Berg – true piano playing is at a premium, and the leader is reluctant to veil his naturally sweet, vibrant tone.
The Brodsky bring a fine boldness and drive to the first movement of the Haydn, relishing its big, symphonic sonorities and virtuoso flights for the first violin; and I like the way they ease gently into the contrasting dolce second theme (1'05''). But in the smouldering C minor Adagio they sound circumspect and literal beside the Lindsay, whose leader, Peter Cropper, imbues his arabesques with a true sense of gipsy spontaneity and wildness. The Lindsay’s sharply etched cello line also allows Haydn’s intense harmonic progressions to register more vividly. The Brodsky (or the engineers) make too long a pause between the Adagio and the minuet (Haydn marks attacca here) and begin the minuet itself quite robustly – I much prefer the Lindsay’s sense of gradual emergence into daylight here. In the Adagio finale, again, the Brodsky, for all their attentive shaping and balancing of the lines (and some nicely judged touches of portamento in the soaring cello part), sound relatively plain and predictable alongside the Lindsay, with their ruminative eloquence and apparently spontaneous variety of colour and phrase.
The Mozart Adagio and Fugue is aptly rugged and incisive, though the contrapuntal textures are not always delineated with ideal clarity. Recorded sound is immediate and lifelike, if a shade top-heavy, Silva’s booklet design as coolly elegant as the Brodsky’s couture.'