Jaroslav Kulhan - Fibich: Piano Quartet/Quintet - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Seven years after they triumphed with Dvorák's quartets, Pavel Haas Quartet are back to Dvorák. For the occasion of recording his quintets, they have invited two guests the pianist Boris Giltburg (winner of 2013 Queen Elizabeth Competition), as well as one of the PHQ founding members, violist Pavel Nikl. Antonín Dvorák composed his Piano Quintet No. 2 while staying at his beloved summer house in Vysoká in the late summer of 1887. The renowned critic Eduard Hanslick responded to it's performance in Vienna enthusiastically InchIt is one of his most beautiful works. A genuine Dvorák.Inch The String Quintet op. 97, albeit only six years younger, presents a completely Inchdifferent DvorákInch. After the Symphony from the New World and the InchAmericanInch quartet, the string quintet is the composer's third work written in America. Besides drawing inspiration from the music of the Native American tribe of the Iroquois which he heard in Spillville in the summer of 1893, he built the third movement around a theme that he had previously considered using in a proposal for a new American anthem. And Hanslick's testimonial? InchThis is probably the simplest, most natural and happiest music composed since Haydn's times. The ear enjoys it with an easy-going attitude and the spirit is not bored for a single moment.Inch Pavel Haas Quartet is at home in Dvorák's music - to quote the Sunday Times, InchIn this repertoire, they are simply matchless today.Inch

On Essential Elements, Ben Paterson presents a fresh take on a number of standards as well as some compelling original compositions in a standard trio . Joining Paterson are bassist Joshua Ramos and drummer Jon Deitemyer.

Robert Schumann, a versatile, well-educated young artist destined for great things, a man whose music has always amazed with it's extent and profundity... and also a person of delicate psyche, which many a time led him to the very border between life and death. He composed the Piano Quartet in C minor, his first piece of this ilk, at the age of 18, and although, notwithstanding his original intention, he would never remake it into a symphony, he still had it on his mind some 20 years later InchI vividly recollect a passage in one of my works (1828), which I thought was romantic, with a spirit different to that of old music that appeared to me as though opening up a new poetic life.Inch The Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47, already attests to Schumann's compositional mastery, with it's idiom inspired by Bach and Beethoven yet speaking in a clearly singular language. The 1853 Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tale Narrations), was one of the composer's last happy creative upswings, written shortly before he attempted suicide by jumping from a bridge into the river Rhine with the aim to put an end to his unbearable mental torment. The Dvorák Piano Quartet's album spans the entire arch of Schumann's work the beginning, the peak and the end. Just like all his music, it shows how immense beauty is often close to pain and suffering. Immense beauty and anguish of the soul in Schumann's chamber music.