US TARIFFS UPDATE | August 2025 | No impact expected on your Presto orders | Read full details
Special offer. Elgar: String Quartet & Piano Quintet
Martin Roscoe (piano)
Brodsky Quartet
The Quartet’s first movement is Elgar at his most elliptical, and the Brodskys catch its unpredictable oscillations expertly…The fiery finale invites bombast, but the Brodskys combine bite and...
Special offer. Elgar: String Quartet & Piano Quintet
Martin Roscoe (piano)
Brodsky Quartet
Purchase product
The Quartet’s first movement is Elgar at his most elliptical, and the Brodskys catch its unpredictable oscillations expertly…The fiery finale invites bombast, but the Brodskys combine bite and...
About
The three great chamber works, the String Quartet, Piano Quintet, and Violin Sonata, were among the very last works that Elgar wrote, composed during an intensive and productive period in 1918 and 1919 whilst living at Brinkwells in Sussex, and under the twin shadows of the horrors of the Great War and the terminal illness of his wife, Alice. The String Quartet was dedicated to the original Brodsky Quartet (the name subsequently taken by the current group when they arrived as students at the Royal Northern College of Music) and was championed by this new Brodsky Quartet from the off, sitting alongside Delius’s Quartet on their debut recording (1984). It has remained a cornerstone of their repertoire ever since. The Brodsky Quartet took the opportunity of the centenary year of both works to perform the String Quartet alongside the Piano Quintet with their frequent co-performer Martin Roscoe, and this recording is a result of that commemoration.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
August 2019
The Quartet’s first movement is Elgar at his most elliptical, and the Brodskys catch its unpredictable oscillations expertly…The fiery finale invites bombast, but the Brodskys combine bite and vitality with a judicious differentiation of emotional temperatures in a highly persuasive reading which makes the music sound remarkably ‘modern’ and daring in places…a warmly recommendable issue.
June 2019
Performances of conspicuous insight, pedigree and power. In the mighty Piano Quintet the Brodskys generate a consistently stimulating rapport with the admirable Martin Roscoe. Theirs is a marvellously cogent conception, ideally paced and splendidly integrated, possessing a dedication, sweep and ardour that betoken a very real identification with this repertoire.
May 2019
They take a very rhapsodic view, allowing for quite a lot of ebb and flow, and observe a good range of dynamics. The ending is lovely.
19th May 2019
The quartet was written for the original Brodsky players, and their namesakes deliver fiercely committed accounts, with Roscoe shining brightly in the quintet.
July 2019
Gloriously opulent yet detailed sound captures each unmissable moment to perfection.
