Brahms: Piano Quintet / Schubert: 'Trout' Quintet

Even with the best players playing the best music, the results can still be routine, but on the night of November 7th, 1974, when the BBC presented Clifford Curzon and the Amadeus String Quartet in the Brahms F minor Quintet at Royal Festival Hall, greatness was definitely in the house. This is a notoriously challenging work, big and long, requiring supreme concentration to maintain dramatic tension over its 45-minute span, yet one is gripped by this performance from the very start, and it never lets go. At the time of the concert, the performers had been making chamber music together for over two decades. Curzon, a thoughtful pianist and eminent Brahmsian, knew how to communicate the music's grandeur while keeping its passions alive. Always rich in tone, his playing is strong yet flexible, reserved, but ready for fire. And the Amadeus are right with him; the sense of spontaneous communication, rather than pat agreement, is thrilling. A felicitous 1971 taping of the Schubert "Trout" Quintet with bassist James Edward Merrett is included on a separate bonus disc, making a nice addition to one of the best Brahms piano quintets one will ever hear.