RECORDINGS

CAROLINE BITTENCOURT

AUERBACH 24 Preludes for violin and piano Christine Bernsted (violin) Ramez Mhaanna (piano)

NAXOS 8.574464

A Danish duo on searing form in one of contemporary music’s great mavericks

Soviet-born, now US-resident composer Lera Auerbach took Chopin’s 24 Preludes op.28 as a model for the overall structure and tonalities of her own 1999 cycle for violin and piano, one in each key and its relative minor, obediently following the cycle of fifths all the way round until it starts again. You’d hardly know it, though, from the often grotesque, sometimes violent music she magically shoehorns into these blazing miniatures, whose relationship with functional tonality seems perpetually up for discussion.

There are distinct nods to Shostakovich, Gubaidulina and even the uncompromising dissonances of Ustvolskaya in among Auerbach’s heart-on-sleeve writing, and the Danish duo of violinist Christine Bernsted and pianist Ramez Mhaanna rise to its challenges magnificently. Bernsted, in particular, sounds like an entirely different player from piece to piece – thin and reedy in the lamenting no.1, frenetically arpeggiating in the flamboyant no.14, ice-cold in the fearful tremolos of no.16, for example – as she responds vividly to Auerbach’s wide-ranging musical demands. Both players, though, throw themselves into the composer’s high-emotion sound world with fierce commitment, to the extent that a full traversal of all 24 pieces can prove a draining experience – or, perhaps more accurately, a profoundly cathartic one. Recorded sound is close and clear.

DAVID KETTLE

PRISM V BACH The Art of Fugue BWV1080: Contrapunctus XIV; Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit BWV668 BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F major op.135 WEBERN String Quartet Danish Quartet

ECM NEW SERIES 4858469

A fascinating century-hopping series reaches a fitting finale

The Danish’s ‘Prism’ series ‘passes a linear beam of light’ from Bach’s seminal contrapuntal writing to Beethoven’s late quartets, which then function as the prismatic pathway to a related, more recent work. Bach’s solemn organ chorale prelude BWV668 and Contrapunctus XIV from The Art of Fugue provide the bookends for this final instalment, the players responding naturally and subtly to each other and bringing clarity and fluidity to their contrapuntal interaction, despite a predominantly smooth, sustained approach. The blending of timbre and secure intonation is matched by playing of conversational vitality in the opening Allegro and fiery scherzo of Beethoven’s op.135. The slow movement’s meditative variations are conveyed with radiance and intensity – though the initial sotto voce indication is largely ignored – and the finale is negotiated with seasoned skill and authority, the impassioned intensity and anguish of its introductory material contrasting sharply with the affirmative joy and vigour of its Allegro.

The fundamental motif of Webern’s tripartite, single-movement String Quartet (1905) links well with op.135’s finale, signalling its serial potential before releasing a sound world warmed by late- Romantic tonality and textures, exquisitely shaded and balanced. Throughout, ECM’s engineers do full justice to these refined, coherent and erudite performances, which combine an exhilarating sweep with minute attention to details of phrasing and timbre.

ROBIN STOWELL

The Danish Quartet stuns in its series finale

LYRITA RECORDED EDITION

E. CASALS Cello Concerto in F major ‘In romantic serious style’

LALO Cello Concerto in D minor Jan Vogler (cello) Moritzburg Festival Orchestra/Josep Caballé Domenchi

SONY MUSIC G010004973738G

A landmark premiere recording of a concerto by the ‘other’ Casals

Jan Vogler produces good heart-onsleeve playing in the lush and dramatic opening movement of Lalo’s Cello Concerto, with much appassionato where directed, and supple beauty in the generous melodies. There are touches, too, of the heroic figure striding forth in the bravura rhetorical passages; this is good storytelling stuff, well matched by the orchestra, with its punchy brass. There is delight in the second movement, too, with soulful, reflective Andantino sections alternating with faster folk-dance passages that mingle elfin lightness and high energy, with Vogler scrupulously observing the many accents as the flutes hocket around him. He romps through the highspirited finale, again with an air of rustic celebration, aided by a biting edge to his bowing.

Enrique Casals, younger brother of Pablo, wrote his Cello Concerto (sub-titled ‘in romantic serious style’) in 1946, by which time it was stylistically out of date by several decades. Vogler captures its broad melodic sweep and easy charm, and negotiates its more technically demanding passages with aplomb. He conveys the sadness of the Adagio doloroso with eloquence and a strength of narrative that binds it into an expressive whole. The finale is a tempo di sardana, the national dance of Catalonia. There is an intimacy to Vogler’s playing, drawing us to share personal confidences as well as communal dance. The warm recording gives close focus to the cello.

TIM HOMFRAY

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Jonathan Dove explores the theme of exile with Raphael Wallfisch

IN EXILE DOVE Cello Concerto: In Exile; Night Song Raphael Wallfisch (cello) Simon Keenlyside (baritone) Jonathan Dove (piano) City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Gergely Madaras

LYRITA SRCD413

A timeless subject is explored in a new concerto for cello and voice

This is the first recording of English composer Jonathan Dove’s Cello Concerto, premiered in September 2021 at the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. Inspired by the family history of cellist Raphael Wallfisch, Dove took as his subject the universal plight of the refugee, fleeing across the seas to a strange land, creating music that is both moving and direct.

Baritone Simon Keenlyside, as the voice of the refugee, sings texts centred on an anonymous tenthcentury English text, The Wayfarer, alternating with writers such as Dante and Kahlil Gibran. Wallfisch’s role is to give voice to the deepest feelings of the exile’s soul, plunging and soaring with powerful eloquence, sometimes commenting after the voice, sometimes moving in duet with it.

The work, a little over half an hour long, is through-composed and opens with the first of three extended sections for unaccompanied cello, gradually climbing from its lowest notes up to the heights in music of intense yearning. Wallfisch is a passionate advocate for the score, his playing, closely recorded, particularly visceral in the highest reaches.

In the final section, ‘My grief on the sea’, Wallfisch’s opening motif, heavy with emotion, develops into a duet with the voice in beautiful high, sustained double-stops. Night Song, a haunting piece for cello and piano, is derived from this music.

JANET BANKS

THE WANDERER GOLIJOV Um dia bom GRAU Aroma a distancia SCHUBERT String Quartet no.14 in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’ D810 Brooklyn Rider

IN A CIRCLE RECORDS ICR025

A tale of two halves from this New York quartet

‘The Wanderer’ is an apt title for this live recording by New York-based quartet Brooklyn Rider, not least for Gonzalo Grau’s Aroma a distancia. The Venezeulan’s six-minute work is imbued with memories of the musical and (especially) dance styles he has absorbed during his peripatetic 50 years. It’s infectious, not a second too long, and the audience in Lithuania’s Paliesius concert hall greets it warmly.

Memories of musics past also permeate Osvaldo Golijov’s Um dia bom, tracing a life as told to a child from morning to midnight and beyond. Influences ranging from a traditional Yiddish folk song to Chick Corea and Blind Willie

Johnson bubble up to the surface, not to mention Gershwin and Vivaldi.

The main work, though, is the Schubert Quartet, which naturally comes up against a barrage of competition. It must have been gripping in concert but transfers less well to a recording. Brooklyn Rider’s upfront, vibrato-light tone suits contrasting moments of hysteria and stasis: much of the finale is truly engrossing, and the organ-like tone of the slow movement’s opening is well worth hearing. But other moments lack the depth of exploration you hear in certain other recordings (the Pavel Haas Quartet on Supraphon has made for a telling comparison). Maintaining roughly the same speed for the Trio as the Scherzo makes it sound merely hurried. And, for all the quartet’s lingering over those awed silences at the work’s opening, the first movement feels a little cosmetic. Brooklyn Rider is impressive in the two new works, but – despite many fine things – doesn’t quite compete in the Schubert.

DAVID THREASHER

A mixed bag from Brooklyn Rider

MARCO GIANNAVOLA

BRACING CHANGE 2 GRIME String Quartet no.2 NEWLAND difference is everywhere (altered) TURNAGE Contusion Piatti Quartet, Bozzini Quartet, Heath Quartet

NMC NMCD242

NMC and Wigmore Hall’s latest collaboration is a winner

Bracing Change was the title devised for the Wigmore Hall and NMC’s first CD collaboration on new works for strings, released in 2017. Returning to that name for the earlier disc’s post-pandemic follow-up brings a whole new set of connotations, ones most directly conveyed here in Helen Grime’s urgent, volatile String Quartet no.2, written not only during Covid lockdowns, but also before and after the birth of Grime’s second son. The result is music of struggle, sometimes violence, but also hardwon luminosity in its closing movement, all of which the Heath Quartet captures magnificently in its purposeful, bracing account. Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Sylvia Plath-inspired Contusion is no less intense, and at times considerably more harrowing, though it’s shot through with Turnage’s trademark jazzy lyricism, even if his surface sweetness seems perpetually about to fracture into raw despair. The Piatti Quartet players – named best performers of Contusion at the 2015 Wigmore Hall String Quartet Competition – give a superbly eloquent, passionate account, painfully fragile but still hard-edged.

Paul Newland provides complete contrast with his difference is everywhere (altered), which explores ideas of infinite variation in even superficially similar things, whether they’re leaves in a forest or the delicately balanced, Feldman-like harmonies that populate Newland’s sparse musical landscape. There’s a hypnotic quality that quickly draws you into his restrained, hushed sound world, and a moving sense of authenticity and imperfection to the gentle trembles, the rasp of bow on string and the minute pitch fluctuations of the Bozzini Quartet’s deeply human reading.

Recorded sound, however, is slightly but disconcertingly different between the three different venues.

DAVID KETTLE

PAUL MARC MITCHELL

KORNGOLD String Quartets nos.1–3 Tippett Quartet

NAXOS 8.574428

A fine new cycle makes the case for this Austrian master’s quartets

We don’t perhaps most readily associate Korngold with chamber music, but something of the richness of his orchestral writing lies in these quartets. That’s certainly true in the First Quartet, replete with doubleand triple-stopping. The Tippett Quartet’s playing here (see Session Report, April 2023) is fearless, not only in creating a wall of sound, but also relishing the dissonances in the complex and chromatic counterpoint created by the 26-yearold Korngold. In the lighter finale, however, the spirit struggles to fly.

To the Second Quartet (1933) the group brings agile playing in the opening Allegro and apt levity in the charming Intermezzo. The Larghetto is an extraordinary movement, opening with wide, distant chords (almost 20 years before Vaughan Williams’s choral ‘Full fathom five’) and first violinist John Mills soars beautifully over his colleagues’ glowing harmonies.

By the time of his Third Quartet of 1944, Korngold was in Hollywood. His biographer Brendan Carroll tells us that music from four film scores was incorporated into this final quartet, the most obvious (and lyrically luscious) of which is the love theme from The Sea Wolf (1941). There’s turbulence here too, which the players convey eloquently.

Impressive assurance from Ellinor D’Melon

A slightly boxy recording tends to prevent the textures from breathing, and the playing of the Doric Quartet on their Chandos recording may be more nuanced and colouristic, but this is a fine offering, and at budget price.

EDWARD BHESANIA

LALO Symphonie espagnole op.21 TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto in D major op.35 Ellinor D’Melon (violin) RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra/Jaime Martín

RUBICON RCD1106

A young violinist makes a notable impression in a crowded arena

After establishing her technical credentials in the exposition, violinist Ellinor D’Melon shows her personality in the development, with touches of rubato and dynamic flexibility, and again in the cadenza, played with flair and continuity of line. She is lyrical as much as extrovert, but she can be a showman when Tchaikovsky calls for one, particularly in the finale, despatched with strength and élan.

D’Melon produces mighty playing in the opening Allegro non troppo of Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, with vibrant sound on the G string (du talon indeed!) matched by a pliant expression in the dolce espressivo melody. She brings a coquettish phrasing to the Scherzando second movement, although her tone remains full-blooded and a tad unyielding. In the Intermezzo she is gentle and musing, with nice contrasts between her D and G string playing and a subtle rhythmic freedom against the steady underlay of pizzicato cellos; the Andante impresses too, with a firm-toned beauty. In the finale she exploits to the full its shifting moods, outgoing one moment, quicksilver the next. Jaime Martín and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra are sensitive partners and the recorded sound is warm, with the violin to the fore.

TIM HOMFRAY

MYASKOVSKY Cello Concerto op.68; Cello Sonatas: no.1 op.12, no.2 op.81 LIADOV Two Pieces op.11 RIMSKY- KORSAKOV Serenade op.37 Raphael Wallfisch (cello) Simon Callaghan (piano) Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra/ Łukasz Borowicz

CPO 555 420-2

Performances short on ardour are a missed opportunity

Until fairly recently, Myaskovsky’s substantial contribution to the cello repertoire eluded the widespread attention on disc and in the concert hall that it surely deserved. Now the balance has to some extent been redressed, and newcomers to his music – which in these works is characterised by sumptuous Rachmaninoff-like melodies full of yearning melancholy – have plenty of choice regarding recorded interpretations.

This inevitably affects my response to the present release. On the plus side, you get warmly recorded performances of the sonatas and the Cello Concerto. But direct comparison puts this newcomer at a disadvantage. Take, for example, the opening of the First Sonata. Its gloriously long asymmetric melodic phrase here feels disconnected, missing any feeling of evolving intensity as the sequence rises to an impassioned climax. This tendency to chop up extended phrases also characterises Raphael Wallfisch’s approach to the Second Sonata. On the other hand, the more extrovert writing in the second movement of the Cello Concerto has greater incisiveness. It’s a pity, though, that the forlorn melody that opens and closes the work sounds less involving, lacking a sense of inner reflection that other interpreters bring to it.

Warm, generous playing from Francesco D’Orazio and the LSO

COURTESY BIS

The Liadov salon pieces and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Serenade are much more effective, with more character to the playing.

JOANNE TALBOT

PALUMBO Violin Concerto; Chaconne Francesco D’Orazio (violin, electric violin) Francesco Abbrescia (electronics) London Symphony Orchestra/Lee Reynolds

BIS BIS2625

Richly varied colours and sophistication make an enticing listen

The CD’s cover image says it all: a hugely complex contemporary score, marked up and decorated in a rainbow of colours. Yes, Italian composer Vito Palumbo’s music is intricate, and often challenging. But he also has an alluring way with iridescent, restlessly shifting colours, as the two works on this rewarding disc demonstrate.

Palumbo himself has mentioned Berg’s 1935 Violin Concerto as an inspiration for his own concerto of 2015, and connections are clear in the more recent piece’s sumptuous harmonies and deep lyricism (a wonder-filled section near the end even sounds uncannily like a John Williams movie score). There’s a sense of ever-expanding melody that soloist Francesco D’Orazio captures excellently in his warm, generous playing, with an expressive, finely controlled vibrato and abundant character across the rhapsodic writing; the London Symphony Orchestra provides spirited support under Lee Reynolds.

D’Orazio swaps his Guarneri for a five-string electric fiddle in Palumbo’s two-movement Chaconne, which first pits the soloist against a shimmering electronic backdrop, and later against 30 mirror images of himself. It’s a volatile, sometimes elusive piece that blends fantasy and sonic adventurousness, and D’Orazio responds with far harder-edged, sometimes astringent playing that stands out beautifully against the composer’s washes of sound. The massed, high-pitched violins set microtonally apart in the Chaconne’s second movement make for a rather headache-inducing, if impressive, sonic texture, but it’s the piece’s uneasy relationship with more traditional tonality and playing, and its joyful celebration of the wild unpredictability of sound that make it particularly striking. Recorded sound is close, warm and clear throughout.

VIDAR SKAAR BORGERSEN

DAVID KETTLE

SAINT-SAËNS Violin Sonatas: no.1 in D minor op.75, no.2 in E flat major op.102; Fantaisie in A major for violin and harp op.124; Berceuse op.38 for violin and harp (arr. Fitzpatrick) Cecilia Zilliacus (violin) Christian Ihle Hadland (piano) Stephen Fitzpatrick (harp)

BIS BIS2489

Plenty of pleasure to be found in violin sonatas by a French master

The winding opening of Saint-Saëns’s First Violin Sonata is shaped by Cecilia Zilliacus and Christian Ihle Hadland with dynamic flexibility and their reading develops into strong, bright-toned playing, forthright and determined. Only at the end of the movement do they soften into quiet beauty for the transition to the second-movement Adagio; this is delicately done, its demisemiquaver writing given a caressing quality, Zilliacus imbuing the arabesques with graceful freedom. The featherweight Allegretto moderato has twinkling charm, with clean and precise staccato semiquavers. And while she sprints neatly through the moto perpetuo finale, she can’t quite persuade us that this is Saint-Saëns at his finest (the unkind might call it glorified note-spinning).

The duo gives a satisfyingly robust and urgent account of the first movement of the Second Sonata, alive to both the twisting melodic cells and the dramatic discourse. The Scherzo is effervescent, while the Andante has an air of mystery, with Zilliacus gently floating her line above the rippling piano as if she has all the time in the world. The disparate elements that make up the finale are given plenty of character here.

Cecilia Zilliacus: dynamic flexibility

Harpist Stephen Fitzpatrick joins Zilliacus for Saint-Saëns’s A major Fantaisie, mixing charm and drama, and his own arrangement of the Berceuse op.38, played sotto voce. The recording is warm and close.

TIM HOMFRAY

SCHUBERT Fantasie in C major D934; Rondo brillant in B minor D895; ‘Sei mir gegrüsst’ D471 (transcr. Chen); ‘Ständchen’ D957 no.4 (transcr. Elman) Stella Chen (violin) Henry Kramer (piano)

PLATOON (DOWNLOAD ONLY) PLT17190

A young violinist makes her mark in a crowded arena

Schubert’s C major Fantasie was Stella Chen’s perhaps surprising choice of repertoire for the recital round of the 2019 Queen Elisabeth Competition. It’s a gamble that obviously paid off, for the American violinist took first prize and followed it up with a string of other awards – and, in addition, found time to write her PhD on the work.

Such strong identification with the Fantasie reveals itself in the intelligence and instinctiveness that so palpably underpin her performance. The countless challenges of Schubert’s un-violinistic writing are conquered, both here and in the slightly earlier B minor Rondo brillant, and a close microphone placing makes the listener aware of how she surmounts the obstacles Schubert throws in her path. The richness of her sound doesn’t preclude a pleasing rasp when she digs in as her part grows knottier, but there’s no sense of sliding or stretching intonation in some of those thorny figurations that dance deliriously across the strings. A word, too, for the highly characterised pianism of Henry Kramer.

Completing the programme, it’s refreshing to have two song transcriptions. Chen’s own arrangement of ‘Sei mir gegrüsst’, which forms the basis for the Fantasie’s variations, shows just how Schubert adapted it to make it suitable for such a purpose, while in Mischa Elman’s transcription of ‘Ständchen’ from Schwanengesang, Chen does a fine impersonation of a violinist from a bygone age. Some may baulk at a playing-time of only just over 46 minutes, but in an era of streaming that becomes less of an issue. The focus and charisma of Chen’s performances anyway erase all such concerns.

DAVID THREASHER

SENFTER Viola Sonatas: no.1 op.41, no.2 op.101; Duo op.127, Variations op.94; Five Pieces op.76 Roland Glassl (viola) Oliver Triendl (piano)

HÄNSSLER CLASSIC HC22076 (2CDS)

Compelling accounts put an overlooked composer back on the map

Burdened with fragile health due to a severe bout of diphtheria during her childhood, Johanna Senfter (1879– 1961) led a sedentary life, dedicated to fostering the musical life of her native town, Oppenheim am Rhein in south-west Germany. She studied in Frankfurt and Leipzig, numbering Max Reger among her teachers. The nearly exhaustive catalogue she compiled of her compositions numbers 134 opuses. The present set includes all her music for viola and piano.

The earliest work is a sweeping Sonata in F minor dating from 1922 that shows many Regerian traits in its form and shaping of themes, particularly in the Scherzo and variation-form finale. Similarly built and – at 37 minutes – even more expansive, the F major Sonata from 1943 shows the composer enterprisingly pushing formal and harmonic boundaries without quite abandoning traditional tonality. Written the same year, Senfter’s op.94 is a set of variations on an original theme capped by a fugue, again a most Regerian kind of structure that, however, distinctly shows her by-now familiar fingerprints.

Isabelle Faust sheds new light on Stravinsky

MARCO BORGGREVE

Unhindered by formal or textural restraints, her treatment of tonality is at its freest in the Duo from 1956, her last viola composition. Contrastingly, the Five Pieces written in 1932 employ a simpler vocabulary in keeping with their use as church music illustrating various Christian festivities (the Christmas hymn ‘In dulci jubilo’ features prominently in the opening movement). Senfter played both violin and piano and her writing is accordingly idiomatic. Roland Glassl and Oliver Triendl make a convincing case for her music with consistently well-shaped, tightly concentrated readings that have been faithfully recorded. Johanna Senfter’s violin music has already been recorded by Friedemann Eichhorn. With her viola works now also covered, let’s hope for further exploration of this fascinating composer’s substantial oeuvre.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

STRAVINSKY Violin Concerto in D; Apollo: excerpt; Three Pieces for string quartet; Concertino for string quartet;

Pastorale for violin, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet and bassoon; Double Canon for string quartet Isabelle Faust (violin) Les Siècles/ François-Xavier Roth

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM902718

Period instruments shed new light on a 20th-century master

François-Xavier Roth’s re-creation of historically aware performances of Stravinsky’s music with his periodinstrument Les Siècles focuses here on the Violin Concerto. He enlists as soloist Isabelle Faust, who, aided by Les Siècles’ unique instrumental colours, clear articulation and diaphanous textures, sheds new light on this essentially neo-Classical work. Faust is at her most incisive in the spiky, taut outer movements, exchanging thematic material freely with the orchestra in the Toccata and cutting more of a virtuoso path in the jovial, rhythmically driven Capriccio; and she brings fantasy and lyricism to the two Arias, particularly Aria II’s fluid, melancholy melismas. The truthful, well-balanced recording expertly preserves the vivid timbres offered by the orchestra’s early 20thcentury French wind instruments.

The sense of Stravinsky’s concerto as a chamber work aligns comfortably with the decision to complete the disc with apposite examples of his actual chamber music. The resultant programme may only last around 44 minutes yet still has much to offer. Faust is the elegant protagonist in an excerpt from Apollo, joins a group of four reed winds in the wistful Pastorale and leads a string quartet in deft accounts of the Concertino, Double Canon and the experimental Three Pieces.

ROBIN STOWELL

BRITISH CELLO WORKS VOL.2 ARMSTRONG GIBBS Cello Sonata in E minor op.132 DELIUS Cello Sonata SMYTH Cello Sonata in A minor op.5 BRITTEN Cello Sonata Lionel Handy (cello) Jennifer Walsh-Hughes (piano)

LYRITA SRCD412

Fascinating repertoire needs stronger characterisation

This enterprising programme of British cello sonatas encompasses a mixed bag of styles from the tonal writing of Armstrong Gibbs, which hints at Fauré, to the ethereal, impressionistic style of Delius, with its melismatic melodic lines and luscious harmonies. More striking thematic material is encountered in Ethel Smyth’s early sonata, its first movement, cast in an accessible Romantic framework, owing much to Mendelssohn and Schumann. The performances of these works are assured rather than inspired, the shape of individual phrases requiring greater nuance and a more choreographed dynamic range. The recording sounds a little compressed which serves to underline these limitations.

The Britten Cello Sonata is a completely different kettle of fish, stylistically speaking: its more concise writing and acerbic idiom providing welcome contrast to the opulence of the earlier works. However, similar issues dog this performance too, the ‘Elegia’ movement, in particular, lacking real tonal imagination. There are many alternative recordings of this work that present a more distinctive and expressive interpretation, but if you want to explore the earlier era of British 20th-century cello repertoire, there are worse places to start.

JOANNE TALBOT

BRAHMS String Quartet in B flat major op.67 HAYDN Seven Last Words op.51 MOZART String Quartet in G major K387; SCHUMANN Piano Quintet in E flat major op.44 SMETANA String Quartet in E minor, ‘From My Life’ TCHAIKOVSKY String Quartet in E flat major op.30: Scherzo Primrose Quartet, Jesús- María Sanromá (piano)

BIDDULPH 85023-2 (3CDS)

Outstanding Haydn in a mixed offering from this classic quartet

Having let the Budapest and Busch ensembles drift off to Columbia, in 1940 RCA Victor began recording the fledgling Primrose Quartet; but in 1941 Oscar Shumsky was replaced by Joseph Fuchs and the 1942 union-imposed recording ban ruled out any studio comeback.

This is not a retread of Biddulph’s earlier Primrose Quartet release. Adding the unpublished K387 necessitates a third disc, so the Schumann is no longer split in two. A nice tempo ushers in the Mozart, with pretty good sound. Primrose’s little solos do not stand out: a decade later, the young Amadeus is better at delineating voices and more gracious – the Primrose Menuetto is blunt and businesslike. Its Andante cantabile is more eloquent but in the Molto allegro the players value brilliance over opera buffa.

The treasure is Haydn’s Seven Last Words. We may (and I do!) wish for a Busch Quartet recording but the Primrose set, made at sessions a year apart, is handsome in sound and dedicated in terms of interpretation. The quartet played the cycle, with the Smetana, in its concert hall debut three days after the first sessions.

Schumann’s Quintet with the fine Puerto Rican pianist Sanromá has much to enjoy, though is sometimes insensitively paced. Well received, it was soon outclassed by the Serkin– Busch version, better proportioned and even more intensely poetic. Tchaikovsky’s Scherzo, taken too fast for its humour to bloom, has a more relaxed Trio.

The Vivace of the Brahms sacrifices its bucolic nature – the composer out on a summer walk – for specious excitement, leaving me feeling hustled. The Andante is pleasingly sung, while the Agitato highlighting Primrose’s viola is fast, although there are moments where the tempo slackens; and the Variations are splendid.

Smetana’s autobiography has its moments, including quite a stylish polka and lovely cello in the Largo sostenuto – but at the start of the finale the Primrose crushes the life out of the rhythm (Czech ensembles, notably the Smetana Quartet, give it more lift). Shumsky’s high E, signifying Smetana’s deafness, barely registers. A mixed bag, then, in sound and performance, but worth having just for that Haydn. The booklet erroneously lists identical timings, applicable to none of the works, for four of them.

TULLY POTTER