Brahms
' two string quintets are comparatively rarely played, unlike his totally accessible string sextets from earlier in his career. They are late works with the complexity characteristic of the music from the later parts of
' career, but they also have an overall light quality, with the
String Quintet No. 1 in F major, Op. 88
, falling into the simpler three-movement form, and the
String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111
, later acquiring the nickname "
Prater Quintet
" after the famed Viennese pleasure garden. It is a tough combination to catch accurately, but the careful, detailed readings by the
Gringolts Quartet
and violist
Lilli Maijala
manage the trick.
intended the second quintet to be his final work (he changed his mind after hearing
Richard Mühlfeld
play the clarinet), and the group captures the valedictory quality. Physical buyers get an excellent set of notes by
Katrin Eich
describing the way
, with some help from
Joseph Joachim
, struggled with details in this quartet.
Eich
points to the beginning of the
String Quintet No. 2
, where the cello has to struggle to be heard over structurally significant rhythms in the upper parts. The
Gringolts
handles this juncture very well: the top chords are not damped down, but cellist
Claudius Herrmann
invests the music with enough drive that the listener's focus is split evenly. So it is throughout, with subtle phrase treatments within a framework that is restrained overall and doesn't lose the gentle Classicism of the music. The
BIS
label's sound from a Swiss Reformed church is overbright but does not lose clarity. ~ James Manheim