The Brandis Quartett, together with colleagues from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, are ideal for this repertoire. As some of the key principal players throughout the Karajan era they made perhaps the most famous orchestral recordings of Verklärte Nacht and Metamorphosen in the catalogue. As chamber musicians with more than twenty years experience playing together they combine the subtlest nuances with a sense of orchestral sonority. The senior members of the group - Thomas Brandis, Wolfgang Boettcher and Rainer Zepperitz - are among an increasingly rare breed of today's performers whose interpretations draw on direct experience of the war's aftermath in the cities Strauss knew.