I liked the earlier Marco Polo disc of the A major Quintet for clarinet, piano and strings (10/92) for the naturalness and musicianship of the playing, and despite some small reservations about the recording, preferred it to the Preiser rival (2/92). All three string players are members of the Slovak Philharmonic. The B flat Quintet (1932) is the earlier and shorter of the two, though both were written with the left-handed pianist, Paul Wittgenstein, in mind, the piano part being subsequently rearranged for both hands by Friedrich Wuhrer, who was, incidentally, a pupil of the composer. Although it is only about half the length, it is equally neglected in the concert-hall. Like its companion it is a piece of real substance and has some of the autumnal melancholy of late Brahms and the nobility of Elgar or Suk. It was composed in the wake of his daughter's death and its character reflects this in both mood and colour. (The otherwise excellent insert-note does not allude to this.)
In both quintets the players are identical save for Frantisek Torok who replaces Stanislav Mucha as first violin on the companion disc. At the opening I thought his tone wanting in timbre, and the intonation of the group not absolutely spot-on, though to be fair, the questing chromatic lines and Reger-like harmonic texture are very taxing and take their toll on both of the rival accounts that I have heard. The Slovak group are considerably faster than Jorg Demus, Alfred Prinz, Anton Kamper and colleagues on Preiser (they take 11'58'' to the Viennese group's 14'38''). I have to say that the latter makes more musical sense: Kamper was a Schmidt pupil and I would assume his tempo to be more authoritative. Things pick up later and in the glorious slow movement and the finale the Slovak group produce playing of much finesse. The clarinettist Aladar Janoska is a most sensitive artist who phrases with genuine imagination, and is, I think, to be preferred to Ernst Ottensammer on Orfeo, though not Prinz. Daniela Ruso is certainly more subtle and responsive a pianist than Rainer Keuschnig, the main weakness of the Orfeo version. Moreover the latter recording suffers from excessive reverberance and is not ideally balanced. The Phantasiestucke are very early and not particularly characteristic, and the piano pieces slight. Both the venue and the production team are the same as on the companion disc, and although there is not quite enough perspective, the recording is more than serviceable.'