Dvořák: Piano Quintet, Op.81, Frank Braley, piano

The Piano Quintet, written in the summer of 1887 and first performed the following year, came midway through Dvořák’s compositional output and is defined by contrasts: lush romantic lyricism combined with fast and furious passages, with much of the melodic material deriving from Czech folk music. Dieltiens’s beautifully warm cello sound, first heard in the opening bars of the exposition over a softly lilting piano accompaniment, sets the standard for the rest of the work. The musicians cling to every bar of this undulating score, and the viola playing is particularly beautiful in the outset of the Andante con moto.

Written about ten years before the Quintet, the Bagatelles make an excellent partner. They were written for the rather unusual combination of instruments, two violins, cello and harmonium, at the request of the critic and impresario Josef Srb-Debrnov, who happened to have a harmonium in his drawing room. Upon hearing this delightfully quirky set of pieces, more transparent (though not to their detriment) than the more mature Quintet, an image is conjured up of a slightly plump, red-faced, jolly character with a terrific sense of humour. In the wrong hands the harmonium could be a clumsy bedfellow to the agile strings, but not here; the sinewy string sound blends homogeneously with the harmonium to create a truly unique yet evocative soundscape, light-hearted though never flippant, in the masterful hands of these musicians.

About the performers

Belgian cellist Roel Dieltiens founded Ensemble Explorations as a period-instrument chamber group, and by the time of this recording had already built a strong reputation on Harmonia Mundi for exactly the kind of unusual repertoire pairing heard here. Pianist Frank Braley, a French pianist who won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1991, brings a soloist’s profile to a genuinely collaborative chamber project, the quintet demands the piano act as an equal partner to the strings rather than a supporting role, which is part of what distinguishes a strong recording of the work from a merely competent one.

With Roel Dieltiens and Ensemble Explorations having already been awarded Gramophone Editor’s Choices for two discs, this latest offering would certainly merit a nomination for a third.