Brahms: String Quintets

Brahms famously ran into problems with a two-cello string quintet, which metamorphosed into a work for two pianos, and then into the great Piano Quintet we know today. Small wonder, then, that his two surviving string quintets follow a different model – two violas rather than two cellos. Lawrence Power and the Takács Quartet sound much more at home in the Quintet in G, the later and weightier of the two, with an unforgettable, overwritten opening that the composer steadfastly refused to alter. The slightly other-worldly third movement, and the Hungarian-flavoured finale also come off well. The performance of the earlier Quintet in F is not as well focused or musically pointed. url.ie/4qdb