Brahms: String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51 No. 2

“the best quartet to have come out of Spain for many a year” The Strad

“It's typical of the Casals approach that, even in the Piano Quintet, it should be the introspective moments that make the biggest impression - their playing before the finale builds to its last hurrah is beautiful - and in all these works, something a little more three-dimensional is needed.” Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 5th September 2008 ***

“This is the finest recording of Brahms’s Piano Quintet since the electrifying Eschenbach/Amadeus version … Stephen Hough and the Takács Quartet push the music about as far as it can go … one senses from the start that [Hough] is really fired up and the Takács follow him every inch of the way with playing of beguiling tonal sophistication and thrilling intensity … this is an exceptional account of a truly exceptional masterwork … the Takács gently caress and cosset this extraordinary music with a glowing sensitivity and insight … highly recommended, especially to those who normally find Brahms a composer they admire rather than fall in love with” International Record Review

“These new versions from Stephen Hough and the Takács Quartet strike me as even better, and in more modern sound … in both Quintet and Quartet the performers give bright, focused, alert, almost ‘classical’ readings, very different from the ponderous brown studies that marked Brahms performances of yesteryear … this is an altogether recommendable release” BBC Music Magazine

“a model for what chamber music should be” The Guardian

“In the Brahms Second Quartet the Takács fins a most appealing lightness of touch. … the Piano Quintet… has fire and passion aplenty… There's a feeling of coming together of ideas, with these artists… sparking off one another in a very unstudio-ish way.” Gramophone Magazine, Janurary 2008

“In both Quintet and Quartet the performers give bright, focused, alert, almost 'classical' readings…” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 ****

“You could go many a long day without encountering a more overtly romantic composer than the Brahms you meet here.” Gramophone

“When you have an intelligent, technically almost superhuman ensemble like the Emerson Quartet, playing with obvious feeling for the music, reservations about quartet-style fly out of the window.” BBC Music Magazine

“This unusual pairing of quartets…is an effective one, and perfectly suited to the strengths of this fine ensemble. The Heine Quartet brings to both works a sustained intensity and wide emotional range, with clean, clear playing and superb balance. The players adroitly negotiate the mood shifts of Brahms…The players show a judicious and effective use of vibrato…they are abetted by an acoustic that allows both satisfying clarity and fullness of sound…a particularly satisfying performance of the Janácek. This is indeed intimate playing…producing a cumulative depth and complexity of feeling that is profoundly moving.”.” Tim Homfray, The Strad “Chamber Selection”

"irresistible in its dramatic sweep and expressive intensity." The Sunday Times

The reviewer of the opus 51 Quartets in Gramophone in September 1990 commented: “… in the tonal mellowness and bloom of the recording itself, not to mention their own intuitively musical phrasing, their intimate interplay and subtleties of balance, this disc somehow manages to bring home Brahms’s true richness as a quartet composer …”.