Not so long ago new recordings of Schumann's three string quartets were rare events, but this is at least the third set to appear this year. The discs mark the recording debut of the Gringolts Quartet ...

Our received legacy of Schumann string quartet recordings goes back as far as the Flonzaley, Capet, Léner and Prague Quartets, but I can honestly say that as treasurable as those vintage documents are ...

Recordings of Schumann’s three string quartets may not be anything like the novelties they were even a decade ago, but performances as thoughtful, vivacious and individually coloured as these by the ...

If Marc-André Hamelin's playing in the Piano Quintet had the same degree of refinement and the breathtaking range of subtle nuance that the Takács Quartet display in their account of the A major ...

Of all the indisputably great composers, Schumann has had to contend with more brickbats than most. Now we’ve finally scotched once and for all the notion that he couldn’t orchestrate very effectively ...

If 1841 had been Robert Schumann's miraculous 'Year of Song', with all those fantastic song cycles pouring out of the composer, then 1842 was no less significant. Schumann had never written any ...

The Leonkoro (Esperanto: ‘Lionheart’) Quartet make their debut album following a string of competition wins. As I remarked in a recent Collection (2/23), it’s heartening that so many young chamber ...

In the Third it is the outer movements that come off best, the Engegård truly relishing the dancing finale. Though, if you turn to the recent Elias account, you’re frankly in a different league in ...

Early String Quartets, Middle String Quartets Wihan Quartet (Nimbus Alliance NI6105/6109) These sets complete the Wihan Quartet's outstanding live recordings of complete Beethoven quartets, performed ...

The Doric Quartet's first two discs for Chandos covered the quartets of Korngold and Walton, but with Schumann's three works of Op 41, his only quartets, they move into much more mainstream territory, ...

The sound of the Zehetmair Quartet - refined, lean and coolly transparent - isn't obviously suited to full-blooded romantic works like the quartets Schumann composed in 1840. But the perfect poise of ...