Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op 25 (1861) [38:33]
Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major Op 26. (1862) [41:20]
Trio Santoliquido with Bruno Giuranna (viola)
rec. 1958, Beethoven-Saal, Hanover
PRISTINE AUDIO PACM067 [79:53]
This is an eminently worthwhile thing to restore to the catalogue. Matters
are sometimes confused because the Trio Santoliquido with violist Bruno Giuranna
was occasionally known as the ‘Quartetto di Roma’ and so a small degree of
caution is necessary if you have LP incarnations that have them thus.
These two Brahms performances are early DG stereos made in the Beethoven-Saal,
Hanover, in 1958. XR has been employed to round ‘up and down’ so that the
sonority generated by the ensemble now sounds fuller in the bass and with
a slight degree more body in the upper frequencies.
With their habitual fine rapport and ensemble strengths – Giuranna was always
a splendid violist – both performances unfold with great warmth and sensitivity.
Tempo decisions are invariably backed up by appropriate surety of execution
and there is a canny control of individual and corporate bow weight in the
Intermezzo of the G minor – to take one example of their subtlety of expression.
Here they even bring Italianate warmth to the music-making, the wristier,
colouristic playing offering generosity and breadth of lyric flow. Again their
sound isn’t too saturated in the slow movement, and the structural complexities
of the finale are well handled; nothing too abrupt or discursive goes on.
They take a more obviously lyric approach to the companion A major than a
number of ensembles but this approach also includes a fair degree of sheer
elegance of phrasing. The Trio Santoliquido was a nuanced ensemble and with
Giuranna a fully integrated member there is plenty of balance on show; legato
is a given, and the result is a reading of rewardingly lyric execution, though
one with a strong spine.
Record buyers of the time were not starved of fine performances of the piano
quartets. Members of the Hollywood Quartet with Victor Aller made their celebrated
LPs: Testament SBT 3063 - a 3 CD round up which includes all three of the
Piano Quartets, the second String Quartet and Schumann’s Piano Quintet. The
78s of the Busch and the Pro Arte had set high historic standards pre-War,
and these early stereos set an appropriately high standard at the end of the
1950s and the stereo era.
Jonathan Woolf