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Brahms & Schumann: Chamber Music / Pressler, Pacifica Quartet
Cedille

Brahms & Schumann: Chamber Music / Pressler, Pacifica Quartet

$19.99

Details

Composer
BRAHMS SCHUMANN
Artist
Pressler
Format
CD
Label
Cedille
Released
Mar 10, 2017
Catalog #
CDR 170
UPC
735131917025

About

The internationally celebrated, Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet joins forces with legendary pianist Menahem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio for Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34, a pillar of German Romanticism that opens with one of the most recognizable melodies in classical music. Pressler, a consummate chamber artist, performs the virtuosic piano part with a clarity and transparency that makes the piano seem like a fellow member of the string ensemble. This noteworthy generation-crossing collaboration — a half-century separates the pianist, who is in his 90s, from the quartet members — yields a spacious, sweeping traversal of the Brahms Quintet that sets its own pace to build suspense and drama. While Pressler has performed the Brahms Quintet with marquee string quartets of the past 50 years, this is his first recording of it. The album offers the unusual, perhaps unprecedented, pairing of Brahms’s early Piano Quintet with a string quartet by his champion Robert Schumann, in this case, the String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 41, No.1, which the Quartet has been performing since early in its career. Dedicated to Mendelssohn, this buoyant, sprightly Romantic quartet showcases the Pacifica’s virtuosity and exuberant performance style while offering a contrast to Brahms’s moodier masterwork. This is the Quartet’s first recording of a Schumann work.

REVIEW:

Menahem Pressler was 91 when he recorded the Brahms Piano Quintet for the first time in his long and distinguished career in 2014. He’s clearly up to the task. Admittedly, tempos are slower than usual for the most part, and you won’t find the kind of dynamism and power in loud tuttis commonly served up by younger keyboard hotshots–although Pressler suddenly sheds decades in the finale’s exultant coda, matching the Pacifica Quartet’s urgent sweep note for note. There’s purpose and meaning in every phrase, every gesture, and every nuance on Pressler’s part.

Listen to the tension that the pianist generates in the soft unison rising scales prior to the first-movement exposition repeat, hear the haunting sense of mystery and flexibility in the Scherzo’s Trio, and notice how Pressler’s tonal shadings enhance the conversational lilt in the fourth movement’s main theme. Having so finely tuned and attentive an ensemble as the Pacifica Quartet on hand doesn’t hurt, of course! If the Hough/Takács and Andsnes/Artemis versions score for fluency, assurance, and grandeur, Pressler’s insights are priceless, and we’d be poorer without them.

A 2016 recording of the Schumann A minor Quartet Op. 41 No. 1 fills out the disc. The Pacifica members make a compelling case for this inspired yet arguably sprawling work. They draw out the first movement’s introduction, giving little clue about the fierce Allegro around the corner and the sharply drawn dynamic contrasts with which they’ll characterize the music.

Ferocity also defines the ensemble’s hair-trigger articulation in the “Mendelssohn on steroids” Scherzo. The Presto sounds faster than it actually transpires, due to the players’ sophisticated balancing of lines and ever-so-discreet italicizations of harmonic felicities; rarely do you hear such fusion of forward drive and contrapuntal clarity as the Pacifica Quartet delivers. It’s an absorbing performance, notwithstanding my preference for leaner and edgier versions by the Zehetmair and Eroica Quartets.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

Tracklist 8 tracks

  1. 1 I. Allegro non troppo 16:19
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Allegro non troppo
    Duration
    16:19
    Composer
    Johannes Brahms
    Performer
    Menahem Pressler
    Ensemble
    Pacifica Quartet
  2. 2 II. Andante un poco adagio 08:57
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Andante un poco adagio
    Duration
    08:57
    Composer
    Johannes Brahms
    Performer
    Menahem Pressler
    Ensemble
    Pacifica Quartet
  3. 3 III. Scherzo: Allegro 08:13
    Track
    3
    Title
    III. Scherzo: Allegro
    Duration
    08:13
    Composer
    Johannes Brahms
    Performer
    Menahem Pressler
    Ensemble
    Pacifica Quartet
  4. 4 IV. Finale: Poco sostenuto - Allegro non troppo 11:20
    Track
    4
    Title
    IV. Finale: Poco sostenuto - Allegro non troppo
    Duration
    11:20
    Composer
    Johannes Brahms
    Performer
    Menahem Pressler
    Ensemble
    Pacifica Quartet
  5. 5 I. Introduction: Andante espressivo - Allegro 09:46
    Track
    5
    Title
    I. Introduction: Andante espressivo - Allegro
    Duration
    09:46
    Composer
    Robert Schumann
    Ensemble
    Pacifica Quartet
  6. 6 II. Scherzo: Presto - Intermezzo 03:59
    Track
    6
    Title
    II. Scherzo: Presto - Intermezzo
    Duration
    03:59
    Composer
    Robert Schumann
    Ensemble
    Pacifica Quartet
  7. 7 III. Adagio 06:05
    Track
    7
    Title
    III. Adagio
    Duration
    06:05
    Composer
    Robert Schumann
    Ensemble
    Pacifica Quartet
  8. 8 IV. Presto 06:26
    Track
    8
    Title
    IV. Presto
    Duration
    06:26
    Composer
    Robert Schumann
    Ensemble
    Pacifica Quartet