GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2023 Chamber Award sponsored by JS Bach . Beethoven . Mendelssohn ‘Prism IV’ JS Bach Fugue, BWV861 Beethoven String Quartet No 15, Op 132 Mendelssohn String Quartet No 2, Op 13 Danish Quartet ECM New Series (485 7305 • 80’) Phrased in two (like Schiff) instead of four (Gould), the G minor Fugue from Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier concentrates the mind for the rigours of Op 132. Here too the DSQ do not equate profundity with ponderousness. Just as in their Nielsen (Dacapo, 2013), I appreciate how their accents articulate the line rather than breaking it up. Not for the first time I find myself wondering as a counterfactual what the Adagio of the Ninth would sound like if orchestral ensembles could emulate the shared sense of purpose of quartets playing the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’; also how the character of each late quartet would change had Beethoven added metronome marks as he did for the symphonies. All of which is to admire the stillness without stasis of the DSQ’s pulse for the movement and how they ease, phrase to phrase, between an unearthly pure tone and a warmer cantabile, never stretching the envelope to expressionist extremes. To read how the 18-year-old Mendelssohn picked up in Op 13 where Beethoven left off is one thing, to hear it in action quite another, and the performance of each work here interprets the other. The angelic play of the contrasting material of the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ as well as its sublime hymnody are elaborated in both inner movements of the Mendelssohn, lending unusual gravity as well as grace to the Intermezzo. The finales of both quartets draw a directly comparable strength and grit from the DSQ, with only Mendelssohn’s recitative sections tending towards a wiriness otherwise absent from the fullblooded studio sound. In concert, anything after the relentless momentum of Op 132’s finale would be too much; at home, the consummate breadth of Op 13’s introduction turns the page on a new chapter, and the DSQ make compelling storytellers. Peter Quantrill Coleridge-Taylor Nonet, ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’, Op 2. Piano Quintet, Op 1. Piano Trio Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective Chandos (CHAN20242 • 64’) These three chamber works, which lay undisturbed and unperformed for the whole of the last century, were selected to be performed by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective to mark their appointment in 2020 as Wigmore Hall’s Associate Ensemble. Indeed, while the Nonet and Piano Quartet have been disinterred for performance over the past couple of decades, the brief Piano Trio was possibly at that London concert receiving its first performance since a student run-through at the Royal College of Music almost 130 years ago. The three works make an impressive sequence, demonstrating Coleridge-Taylor’s precocity: each dates from around 1893, when he was an 18-year-old student at the RCM and five years before he composed Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, the cantata that made his name on both sides of the Atlantic. The two larger works here, the Nonet and the Quintet, burst with confidence and freshness. Coleridge-Taylor may have imbibed the examples of Brahms and Schumann from his teacher, Stanford, but there is a notable individuality to his themes, harmonies and developmental gambits. It’s easy to play spot-theinfluence – the usual suspects from the European Romantic repertory and especially Dvo∑ák, Coleridge-Taylor’s idol, almost to the point of direct quotation in places – but the emerging voice is singular and personal, for all that the external stimuli are yet to be fully digested. The Piano Trio is far more terse, lasting all of nine minutes and devoid of a slow movement. The Kaleidoscope players coalesce around the husband-and-wife duo of Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, and with musicians of the calibre of cornist Ben Goldscheider and cellist Laura van der Heijden, the performances match the assurance and spirit of the music. Only the Quintet has been recorded before – by the Nash Ensemble and by the Tippett Quartet with pianist Lynn Arnold – but the Nonet, whose autograph manuscript can be followed online, is a valuable addition to the catalogue. The listener is reminded to some extent of Schubert, the sound world sitting between that of the Trout Quintet on the one hand and the Octet on the other; the oboe is the only instrument unique to the Nonet. There’s a marked Mendelssohnian lightness to the Scherzo, too. Nevertheless, the Nonet impresses in its own right for its youthful zeal, its genuine craftsmanship and its notable ambition and imagination. David Threasher Piano Quintet – comparative versions: Nash Ens Hyperion CDA67590 (11/07) Tippett Qt, Arnold Dutton CDLX7386 Mozart String Quintets – No 3, K515; No 4, K516 Ébène Quartet with Antoine Tamestit va Erato (5419 72133-2 • 72’) Mozart’s most famous quintets conclude a sequence of four instrumental works from the winter and spring of 1786‑87 whose first movements, at least, are on an unprecedentedly monumental scale: the Prague Symphony, the C major Piano Concerto, K503, and this complementary pair of string quintets, in C major, K515, and G minor, K516. Some 17 years before the Eroica Mozart had got there first, though revealingly he never again essayed the vast dimensions of these four masterpieces. In the quintets we can guess that the expansiveness was prompted both by the richness of sonority created by an 4 GRAMOPHONE 4 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2023 gramophone.co.ukgramophone.co.uk