Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence may not be completely idiomatic chamber music, but a good deal of it works well in the original sextet version, and the Quartet's slow movement definitely loses something of its sweet, salon intimacy when played by string orchestra—this is a miniature, whatever Tolstoy may have said about it, not a Repin-scale narrative.
The Andante cantabile of the First Quartet comes over particularly well in this performance: it's neither sentimentalized nor too suave, instead there's a poised, utterly natural expression in all the solos. The glorious tune in the slow movement of the Souvenir doesn't do so well though, and in general, as with the Nuova Era Beethoven/Mendelssohn quintets (see page 56), the playing sometimes lacks the last degree of refinement—it's full of the kind of tiny blemishes that would probably be quite acceptable in concert, but which don't wear well on record. The recording too gives Accardo's accents an extra incisiveness which I'm sure he didn't intend. Certainly Tchaikovsky is treated with more than respect, and there are nice touches throughout, but if you want both works and expense isn't too pressing a consideration, dig out a little extra cash and get the Borodin Quartet's two-disc Tchaikovsky chamber music set—the Second and Third Quartets may well come as an agreeable surprise.'