Elgar - String Quartet; Piano Quintet review | Andrew Clements' classical album of the week

The Guardian 80

Roscoe/Brodsky Quartet
(Chandos)
A century after the composer’s String Quartet and Piano Quintet were premiered, the Brodsky Quartet return them to the spotlight

In May 1919, the first public performances of Elgar’s String Quartet and Piano Quintet were given in a concert at the Wigmore Hall in London. The programme also included Elgar’s Violin Sonata, which had already received its premiere, but all three works had been composed the previous year, when he was also finishing his Cello Concerto. They were the only mature chamber works that Elgar ever wrote. He had made a couple of attempts over the previous two decades to complete the work he had promised to the original Brodsky Quartet, but finally wrote the three-movement score as the first world war was coming to an end. Though he dedicated it to the Brodskys, another group, led by the violinist Albert Sammons, gave the Wigmore performance.