The Dalí Quartet and Olga Kern give a plainspoken account of Brahms’s F minor Quintet, one that’s rather short on detail. Markings such as sotto voce (as in the opening of the Andante, un poco adagio) and con forza are overlooked, and in general their playing feels doggedly determined. Kern likes to play in thick, bold lines that preclude that essential sense of light and shade one hears even in as forthright a recording as, say, that of André Previn and the Musikverein Quartet (Philips, 11/85).

Kern’s approach is more successful in Shostakovich’s Quintet, although I was puzzled by some of the tempo choices. The metronome marking for the opening Prelude is crotchet=72, for example, and the composer comes close to that in his 1946 recording with the Beethoven Quartet (8/58). Kern and the Dalí, however, are nearly half that (at crotchet=38), and then at the Poco più mosso they lurch into high gear so they’re faster even than the composer’s own performance. Granted, Shostakovich’s metronome markings tend to be on the fast side, and I would never advocate adhering to them slavishly, but at the very least they indicate how the tempos were meant to relate to one another.

Curiously, it’s the two finales on this Delos recording that are the most gratifying. I like how disorientating the musicians make the many hairpin crescendo/diminuendos in the slow introduction of the Brahms, for instance, and I appreciate the way they avoid adding any (unmarked) accents in the breathless, jagged phrases of the coda. The Allegretto of the Shostakovich is also effectively characterised. Listen, say, to the acidic grandeur they bring to the passage at 2'12" and then to how sweetly they sing shortly thereafter (at 3'33"). Still, there are so many other, more consistently satisfying versions of both these quintets that I can’t really give this newcomer my wholehearted recommendation.