The unfamiliar name here is that of Pavel Haas. He was born in Brno in 1899, studied with Janacek, taught composition, worked as a repetiteur and contributed much to Brno musical life, was arrested in 1941, and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. The standard Czechoslovak music encyclopedia gives quite a long list of works, and Lubomir Peduzzi, the Czech authority on his life and work, suggests that he is of all Janacek's pupils the one who absorbed rather than merely imitated his teacher's ideas. On the basis of this Quintet (1929), one may cautiously agree. If it lacks the inspired quirks of Janacek's own Mladi (1924), played with a brilliant deftness here, it has been influenced by the sharply separated textures, the connected notion of brusquely opposed phrases, and in turn the implication of passionate ideas stifled almost as soon as they are uttered. The ''Preghiera'' is a strange movement, marked misterioso e triste; and it is succeeded by a wild movement, ''Ballo eccentrico''. Perhaps it is not quite as eccentric as the marking; but this Quintet is the work of a real composer, of whom it would be interesting to hear more.
Foerster and his Quintet belong to another age. Born in 1859, he lived through much to die, full of years, as late as 1951. His autobiography, published in German in 1955 as Der Pilger (''The Pilgrim''), describes much in his long life, including the nature of this wind quintet, and gives some accounts of Janacek. His is the world of Dvorak in which he grew up (he succeeded Dvorak as organist of St Vojt#hch), of an easy, friendly lyricism that has the craft which conceals craft. It is a likeable, well-written work, elegantly played here, and the whole record composes a programme that should give a great deal of pleasure.'