Josef Suk - Piano Quintet; Piano Quartet (Nash Ensemble)

Information

Composer: Josef Suk

• Piano Quartet in A minor, Op. 1
• 4 pieces for violin and piano, Op. 17
• Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 8

Nash Ensemble

    Marianne Thorsen, violin

    Benjamin Nabarro, violin

    Lawrence Power, viola

    Paul Watkins, cello

    Ian Brown, piano

Date: 2003

Label: Hyperion

https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDH55416

-----------------------------------------------------------

Review

Endearing repertoire, surveyed with copious skill and affection

Completed around 1891, Josef Suk’s youthful Piano Quartet bears an inscription to his teacher and future father-in-law Dvoák, and it’s not hard to detect a strong stylistic kinship between the two. Suk’s Op 1 displays a deft touch and keen confidence that go hand in hand with a tumbling, full-throated lyricism. It’s a potent brew – and nowhere more intoxicating than in the rapt central portion of the Adagio slow movement, a passage which (as annotator Jan Smaczny observes) already seems to look forward to the glorious Fairy Tale for orchestra from 1900.

Brahms was the dedicatee of the Piano Quintet, another comparatively early effort written in 1893 but not published until 1915. This is an altogether more ambitious, harmonically adventurous beast, cast in four movements as opposed to the Piano Quartet’s three. Perhaps the Allegro fuoco finale is a little too garrulous to be entirely convincing, but there’s plenty of red-blooded, strongly appealing invention throughout.

Sandwiched between these two main offerings come the Four Pieces for violin and piano of 1900. An agreeably varied, hummable sequence they comprise, too, culminating in an irresistibly playful perpetuum mobile that never fails to lift the spirits.

Lovely fare, then, performed with great polish and heartwarming dedication by The Nash Ensemble, and all cleanly captured by the microphones. This disc will surely provide much pleasure.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 8 / SOUND QUALITY: 8

http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/h/hyp67448a.php

https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/Apr05/suk_nash_CDA67448.htm

https://www.allmusic.com/album/josef-suk-piano-quintet-piano-quartet-mw0001417591

https://www.amazon.com/Piano-Quartet-Op-Quintet/dp/B00026W64A

-----------------------------------------------------------

Josef Suk (4 January 1874 – 29 May 1935) was a Czech composer and violinist. Known as one of Antonín Dvořák's favorite pupils, Suk became very close to his mentor and later married Dvořák's daughter, Otilie. He was also the grandfather of famed Czech violinist Josef Suk (1929-2011). Suk, alongside Vítězslav Novák and Otakar Ostrčil, is considered one of the leading composers in Czech Modernism. Although he wrote mostly instrumental music, he occasionally branched out into other genres, such as chamber music and music for solo piano. As a violinist, Suk was a member of the Bohemian Quartet. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Suk_(composer)

***

The Nash Ensemble of London is an English chamber ensemble. It was founded by Artistic Director Amelia Freedman and Rodney Slatford in 1964, while they were students at the Royal Academy of Music, and was named after the Nash Terraces around the academy. The Ensemble has won awards from the Edinburgh Festival Critics and the Royal Philharmonic Society, as well as a 2002 Gramophone Award for contemporary music. In addition to their classical repertoire, the Ensemble performs works by numerous contemporary composers, and has given premier performances of more than 200 works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_Ensemble

http://nashensemble.org.uk/

-----------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks

Links in comment

Enjoy!