Like their leaner-sounding contemporary compatriots the Juilliard Quartet, the younger Guarneri Quartet (founded in 1964 at the Marlboro Music School) contributed significantly to the good health and popularity of chamber music during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. They too offered an alluring spin on the complete quartets of Beethoven (which, like the Juilliard, they recorded twice) and Bartók. They also focused on the unsettling world of Schubert’s last quartets, the G major especially, with its modernistic-sounding second movement (the angry central section specifically). But if you want to jump straight in to sample the Guarneri at their best, go straight to Dvořák’s String Quartet in C, Op 61, the opening minute or two, music where the mood shifts virtually by the second and these superb players don’t miss a trick. This is the Dvořák of the Seventh Symphony and the great tone poems, and then there’s the gorgeous Poco adagio e molto cantabile slow movement, which can rarely have been recorded with such expressive generosity, a peach of a performance where each player leans into his phrases as if sharing a precious amorous secret.

Dvořák does especially well in this set. The immediately appealing Terzetto in C for two violins and viola brings out the eloquent best from quartet leader Arnold Steinhardt, second violinist John Dalley and viola player Michael Tree, each blending with his colleague or allowing a lead voice to shine where appropriate (throughout the collection Tree’s viola and David Soyer’s cello are never under‑projected).

Dvořák’s American Quartet, Op 96, and the American Quintet, Op 97 (where, as on the Budapest Quartet’s superb stereo recording on Sony Classical, the additional viola is played by Walter Trampler) go with a real swing, especially the finale of the quartet and the second and fourth movements of the quintet. The last quartet (Op 106) has an album cover where the players are walking across a zebra crossing Beatles-style and, rather more importantly, an Adagio ma non troppo slow movement that is every bit as affecting as the Largo from the New World Symphony, while the penultimate quartet in A flat, Op 105, is taut, incisive and rhythmically alert.

The Guarneri’s collaborations with pianist Arthur Rubinstein are for me Rubinstein’s greatest chamber-music recordings, where he’s level-pegging with his colleagues rather than playing the virtuoso card alongside them. I except the Brahms B major Piano Trio with Heifetz and Feuermann, but recordings with Rubinstein and the Guarneri include such masterpieces as Dvořák’s Second Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet, Brahms’s Piano Quintet and piano quartets (cellist David Soyer excels in the slow movement of the C minor), Schumann’s Quintet, Mozart’s piano quartets and Fauré’s First Quartet (the quartet members also offer us Fauré’s rarely heard String Quartet, an especially lovely performance of an elusive work).

The Beethoven cycle has many moments that fully level up to the best of its predecessors and successors. The disc that couples Opp 127 and 131 is a good place to start, the transition from Op 131’s opening Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo to the Allegro molto vivace that follows, marked pianissimo at both extremes, like waking from a dream. Above all the Guarneri sound so beautiful, marginally sweeter on these first recordings than on the 1987‑92 Philips/Decca digital remakes (that have also been reissued on Brilliant Classics), more concentrated, too. Op 127’s long-breathed Adagio, ma non troppo is swifter than the remake by a mere 30 seconds but the depth of feeling expressed, say from 11'06", touches the heart in a way that few rivals are on a par with. By contrast, the robust Scherzo that follows, especially the wild middle section around 4'58", suggests the composer dancing summersaults in his head.

Of the middle-period quartets, Op 59 No 1 (the first ‘Rasumovsky’) strikes me as the most compelling, music which like the late quartets coaxes the spirit down to earth and elevates earthly matters to the heavens: this was a gift that only Beethoven had, and the Guarneri are most definitely on the composer’s wavelength. The six early quartets, Op 18, fit on to just two discs and provide us with equal measures of prophecies and backward glances. Beethoven recalls Haydn in the second movement of No 4, while the jaunty ‘rocking horse’ opening of the fifth Op 18 quartet and the duet-like opening of No 6 suggest the dialoguing world of Classical opera. For these parallels to register you need players who know how to make their instruments sing, and once again the Guarneri Quartet oblige. As to the rest, the Brahms and Schumann string quartets, the greatest Mozart quartets (including the six devoted to Haydn), the six viola quintets, Schubert’s cello Quintet with Leonard Rose, an engaging ‘Hungarian Album’ (Kodály’s Second String Quartet, Dohnányi’s Third and an excellent remake of the Second with Peter Wiley, Soyer having left the quartet by 2005), Mendelssohn’s Octet, the quartet here being incorporated into the Marlboro Festival Ensemble, as well as his Quartets Nos 2 and 3 (the latter previously unreleased), Mendelssohn’s Quintet in B flat and works by Haydn (including The Seven Last Words and the two Op 77 Quartets), Verdi, Tchaikovsky (Quartet No 1 and Souvenir de Florence), Borodin, Grieg, Smetana, Debussy and Ravel. I’d rate this as a high-ranking addition to available box-sets of chamber music. I loved it.

The recording

The Complete RCA Album Collection

Guarneri Quartet

RCA (49 CDs)

Mildner in Germany

Back in April 2021 I welcomed Meloclassic’s disc of the Viennese pianist Poldi Mildner’s ‘Recitals in Germany 1955‑1959’. ‘A pianist to reckon with and make no mistake’, I exclaimed, commenting on ‘the reckless, wild temperament, the dynamism, tonal power, dazzling finger velocity and overall virtuosity beyond measure, all dispatched at such amazing speeds, even though, inevitably given such breathless abandon, there’s the occasional stumble’. (You can see silent film of the 17-year-old Mildner playing Chopin’s ‘Octave’ Study by typing ‘Vintage Poldi Mildner Piano Home Movie 1937’ into your search engine.) Much the same sort of thing can be said about the latest Mildner release, two discs this time, featuring some sensitive Chopin (the A minor Mazurka that opens disc 2 is especially lovely), various Liszt Transcendental Studies and the highly emotive Second Ballade, which immediately impress (try ‘Wilde Jagd’, ‘Chasse-neige’ or ‘Tarantella di bravura’). Most of the recordings date from the 1950s but there are two from 1938 (Liszt’s First Mephisto Waltz and Haydn’s E flat major Sonata, HobXVI:52) taken down via shortwave transmitter in sound that’s more than respectable but which are sadly incomplete. Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor from 1933, although brilliant, is missing its last two chords. Mildner is at her most reckless in parts of Schumann’s Carnaval, such as ‘Paganini’ (disc 1, track 17). Brahms’s Handel Variations on the other hand are both grand and flexible. Just try the last variation and fugue (disc 1, tracks 47 and 48). You won’t believe your ears!

The recording

German Broadcast Recordings

Poldi Mildner

Meloclassic b MC1083

François in concert

The German-born French pianist Samson François is far better known on disc than Mildner, having recorded extensively for what’s now the Warner Classics group. Some live and radio studio recordings have appeared, the latest from Meloclassic including Études and Préludes by Debussy (‘Le fille aux cheveux de lin’ and ‘La cathédrale engloutie’ are especially memorable) and a Fauré group, including three Nocturnes superbly played. There are also three concertos, Liszt’s First given a flamboyant performance in Geneva under Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt in 1962, Schumann’s Concerto (where Rudolf Michl conducts in Saarbrücken in 1956) more extrovert than Jörg Demus (see below) but no less expressive. More striking is Chopin’s First Concerto taken from a 1962 live Luxembourg performance, where Carl Melles conducts a foursquare opening tutti and François enters like a robed emperor, his pace broader, his manner more expressive and emphatic. This is the sort of playing I would have expected from Alfred Cortot (especially in the central Romanze), but as he never recorded the piece and I’ve never heard a broadcast recording of him playing it, I’m resorting to guesswork. A most interesting set nonetheless.

The recording

Concert Tours 1956-1962

Samson François

Meloclassic

Demus in Dresden

After graduating in 1945, the Austrian-born pianist Jörg Demus took lessons in Paris with the French pianist Yves Nat (a live recital please, Meloclassic?) and attended masterclasses with the French-born German pianist Walter Gieseking. And yet the player Demus most reminds me of is Edwin Fischer, especially when performing Bach. There’s a lovely Eloquence set of his Bach recordings for Westminster (11 CDs – 4/23), but I especially enjoyed the 1972 Dresden recording of the First Partita included here, the broadly paced Sarabande in particular, such sensitive voicing. This double-pack of Demus’s Dresden concert tours also includes some fiery Schumann including the Concerto under Kirill Kondrashin, Sonata No 2 in G minor, the Toccata, the Études symphoniques and a sequence of encores announced by the pianist including an impulsive Intermezzo from Faschingsschwank aus Wien and other works. I was also impressed by the grandeur he brings to Franck’s Prélude, chorale et fugue, the lilt and liveliness of his Schubert scherzos, écossaises and waltzes, and a group of three Debussy Préludes (self-announced encores again), especially the stormy ‘Ce qu’a vu le vent d’ouest’. All three of these Meloclassic sets are superbly transferred and annotated.

The recording

The Dresden Concerts 1962-1972

Jörg Demus

Meloclassic