This is a superb performance of Taneyev’s massive and meaty Piano Quintet. Like Mikhail Pletnev and his starry quartet of string players on their Gramophone Award-winning recording (DG, 9/05), the members of Spectrum Concerts Berlin appear to love this work dearly.

You can hear their affection in a deeply expressive reading of the slow introduction. Note how they relish the tingling moments of harmonic friction at 1'17" and elsewhere, or the cello’s alluring portamentos at 2'26". In the passionate Allegro patetico that follows, the musicians imbue every phrase with feeling and character – even when the mood seems to shift every few bars, as at 6'57". Rubato is liberally applied throughout but never impedes the music’s propulsive trajectory. It’s all very exciting, too, with a coda that has the frisson of a live concert.

The deliciously zany Scherzo is played with panache and a sense of fun while the tender central Trio section provides welcome contrast, and then the passacaglia-like slow movement balances tensile strength and delicacy – listen, for instance, to pianist Eldar Nebolsin’s exquisite filigree at 7'35". I do wish the ensemble’s tempo for the Moderato molto maestoso in the finale (starting at 5'15") weren’t quite so slow. Taneyev’s metronome mark is quite fast here (too fast, probably) and Pletnev and co are also quite measured, but not as much. This breadth does allow the Berliners to milk the gorgeous passage at 6'34" for all its worth, but at other times it borders on stodginess. This is a minor point, however, and there’s not one moment in the entire work where I feel the players aren’t wholly committed. With glorious string-playing – in tune, polished, well matched and well balanced – this is a performance that rivals Pletnev’s Award-winner.

The Quintet is coupled with a contemporaneous but posthumously published Violin Sonata that finds Taneyev in neoclassical mode. There are bits of Brahms in it, yes, as well as some Fauré, I think, but I’d wager that Beethoven was his model. Where the Quintet is a riot of colour and richly textured, the Sonata is spare and formally concise. It’s often charming, too. I love how the Minuetto is rustic one moment and ethereal the next, and also how the jaunty finale abounds with melancholy longing. Nebolsin and violinist Boris Brovtsyn’s performance is more magical than an earlier Naxos release with Mark Peshkov and Olga Solovieva, and Brovtsyn is sweeter-toned than Vladimir Ovcharek of the Taneyev Quartet (on Northern Flowers). A disc to warm the cockles of a Taneyev fan’s heart.