Revered since the height of the Classical era up to the simmering years of the 20th century, the string quartet represented an ideal genre to which composers entrusted their most innovative ideas. The Modigliani Quartet illuminates these brillant masterpieces, each bearing witness to a turning point in the lives of their authors. Brimming with poetry, audacity and a thirst for life, the singular narratives of these quartets herald the advent of new horizons. © Mirare

For contemporary recorded performances of Haydn's String Quartets, Op. 74, the Czech Kocian Quartet cannot be bettered. For all three quartets composed in 1792 and 1793, the Kocian turns in performances that are models of how Haydn sounds now. Recorded in absolutely honest and true sound in 2004, the Kocian Quartet performances are the epitome of balance, of wit and warmth, of drive and repose, of form and content, and of performance and work. The intonation is clear, the ensemble is clean, the technique is faultless, and the combination ideal. Anyone with half a dozen recordings of Haydn's String Quartets, Op. 74, or with no string quartets at all, with enjoy this disc. © TiVo

The Smetana Quartet are a true legend. For over four decades (1945-1989), the ensemble gained critical acclaim and enthused audiences all over world, particularly in the UK, USA and Japan. They attained perfect chime and extraordinary flexibility in voice leading, resulting in part from their playing the entire repertoire by heart. The quartet performed Beethoven’s works throughout their existence – following Smetana, he was the composer on whose music they focused the most and whose complete quartets were in their repertoire from 1974 onwards. They explored some of Beethoven’s pieces for several years before including them in their concert programmes. In collaboration with a Supraphon team, in 1976 the ensemble embarked upon a colossal project, which in 1985 came to fruition with the release on Nippon Columbia of a recording of the complete Beethoven string quartets. Even though the past decade has seen significant changes pertaining to interpretation and technology, the Smetana Quartet’s account of Beethoven’s works is by no means a “museum exhibit”, with their vivacity and dynamism still enthralling today’s listeners. The recording, carefully digitally remastered from the original analogue tapes, is the very first release beyond Japan. Lovers of perfect sound are afforded the opportunity to listen to it Hi-Res 24 bit/192 kHz. © Supraphon

The new Trio Ernest attempts to make a splash here with its cheeky buried-in-the-score graphics and unconventional Haydn All-Stars title, which doesn't make more than a little bit of sense, but the program and playing can stand on their own. Trio Ernest offers some late Haydn trios, all hanging right at the point where the piano trio was emerging as an independent genre, along with works that show the lasting influence of Haydn's chamber music. The players are right that this influence is a bit overlooked, showing up in works as diverse as a Brahms song (here transcribed for piano trio) and Ravel's little Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, with its musical realization of the letters of Haydn's name. Also included is Lieber Joseph! by composer Jacqueline Fonteyn, a work composed in a modernist idiom in which Haydn's melodic shapes and motifs are nevertheless easily recognizable. Trio Ernest has committed to including a work by a female composer in each concert, and this one bodes well for their ability to find interesting material and perform it convincingly. The Haydn trios themselves are imbued with the high spirits that are essential to a successful Haydn performance. With clear sound from the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo, this release announces an important new presence in the crowded piano trio scene.© James Manheim /TiVo

Haydn's piano trios aren't terribly often played in comparison with his instrumental works in other genres, and the general line on them has been that they are simple Hausmusik with violin and cello lines that may be omitted if desired. The Gaspard Trio, which has embarked on a complete cycle of Haydn's trios (this is the second installment), strenuously disputes this idea, and the group's playing seems designed to bring out the independence of the stringed instruments where it occurs. Perhaps the best way to look at the question is that Haydn is the true creator of the keyboard trio, and his output in the genre offers a fascinating look into his mind as he realized its possibilities. Rather than plow through the trios chronologically, the Gaspard Trio, playing modern instruments, chooses to make each volume in the series an independent release, containing music from various phases of Haydn's career, and here the group lands on three works from the mid-1790s. In these works, which Beethoven certainly would have known, the trio is indeed made up of three equal instruments, and the Piano Trio in E flat major, Hob. 15/29, is one of those Haydn works that seem to look forward to Romanticism. The Gaspard Trio gives it a warm, relaxed performance that's quite appealing, and in general, the group's Haydn is sympathetic and alert to little turns of humor or unexpected formal detail, although they apply improvised, non-notated ornaments that will be to the taste of some listeners but not others. Despite the Gaspard's belief in the importance of these works, the group does not try to put them on the plane of Haydn's quartets, which is all to the good; there is a lightness in the performances that is just right. The early Piano Trio in G major, Hob. 15/41, only occasionally assigns primary material to the violin; by the middle-period Piano Trio in B flat major, Hob. 15/8, Haydn was experimenting all over the place with the emancipation of the violin and cello. Another intriguing feature of the Gaspard Trio's series is that each volume has (and apparently will have) a newly commissioned work that comments on Haydn in some way; the one here, by the cellist-composer, Leonid Gorokhov, is intriguing. There is plenty here to make listeners look forward to what is going to be a substantial series; Haydn composed 45 piano trios. © James Manheim /TiVo

Dvořák’s works for solo piano are in the main an unexplored landscape even for many a pianist and musicologist. This segment of his music lacks Chopin’s sway and finely nuanced emotionality, nor does it possess Liszt’s osten­tatious virtuosity. Just as he did in his entire oeuvre, in his piano works too Antonín Dvořák eschewed flashiness, focusing instead on tender intimate lyricism, teeming with ideas, and shaping even his miniatures with the sensibility of a genius. Such music is certainly worthy of a new complete album. Upon the initiative of Supraphon and the Classical Music Academy, the challenging task was undertaken by Ivo Kahánek, an artist whose recording of Dvořák’s Piano Concerto made with the Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Jakub Hrůša has deservedly gained critical acclaim. The present set encompasses larger cycles and occasional pieces, as well as several little-known works, recorded for the very first time. The album of Dvořák’ piano works provides yet another precious insight into the abundant world of the composer’s soul. Ivo Kahánek recalled the creation of the new recording as follows: “Preparations actually began back in the autumn of 2020, when I gave a concert featuring Dvořák’s music at Dvořák Prague and was the patron of the marathon of Dvořák’s pieces for solo piano within the self-same international festival. Yet I would only learn most of the repertoire in the spring of 2021, directly for the purpose of this recording. The most difficult thing to cope with was the time pressure, since due to the availability of the hall and the team we had to record five hours of music within a mere three months. The most gratifying aspect was discovering some little-known gems among Dvořák’s numerous piano works and having the opportunity to view the better-known pieces in a new way”. The album was made with the generous support of the Karel Komárek Family Foundation, the Classical Music Academy, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. © Supraphon