Jean-guihen queyras and alexander melnikov review

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: January

Description: Period instruments prove revelatory in two Romantic icons

Musicians: Isabelle Faust, Anne Katharina Schreiber (violins) Antoine Tamestit (viola) Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello) Alexander Melnikov (piano)

Works: Schumann: Piano Quartet op; Piano Quintet op

Catalogue number: Harmonia Mundi HMM

Period practice has been slower to infiltrate Schumann’s chamber repertoire than it has his orchestral music. The landscape shifted with the arrival at this repertoire of Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov, whose recordings of Schumann’s trios and concertos were highly acclaimed. Now they belatedly complete the project with two pinnacles among the composer’s miraculous ‘chamber music year’ of

Right away, in the Piano Quartet’s slow introduction you notice the string blend, a product of Faust’s laser-like, focused sound and Queyras’s subtle gradations of tone, joined by violist Antoine Tamestit Alexander melnikov piano.