This release fills a gap with Schuman's chamber music, which is not otherwise represented on CD in the British catalogue. The recording sessions took place only a few months after the composer died in 1992, and these are the first recordings of both No. 2 and No. 5, a substantial document from the composer's last years.
The Second and Third Quartets (1937 and 1939) date from the composer's late twenties, but the third was his first commissioned work and a breakthrough since he felt he could write what he liked. No. 2 is distinctly dry and anonymous but in No. 3, which has been recorded three times, Schuman really gets into his hard-edged New York stride, after studying with Roy Harris and digesting Hindemith and Bartok. This is sinewy music, rather like Tippett's early quartets, and similarly involved with counterpoint.
But No. 5 (1987), laid out in two substantial movements, is the real discovery. The prevailing mood is the rapt stillness of many of Schuman's Adagios—a kind of frozen, elegiac intensity which is impressively maintained. The opening Introduction is much more than that title suggests. Its static sostenuto is relieved by some syncopated commentary from the violins at 7'26'' which leads to a crisis at 8'33'': the tension is not completely resolved in the rich E flat major chords at the end of both movements.
The second movement provides apparent contrast with a set of variations on the Dutch carol, Awake thou wint'ry earth, which opens in the same way as King Jesus hath a garden. As with Schuman's other variations on existing material—English rounds or Billings, for example—he benefits from poignantly audible references to the tune and its tonal harmony. But this movement also stems from the private world of Schuman as opposed to the elan of his rumbustious symphonic epics or the busy public life of his middle years. These are dedicated and effective performances which slightly lack sparkle in the recorded sound.'