Elgar & Beach: Piano Quintets

BBC Music Award Nomination 2021 - Chamber
GRAMOPHONE Award WINNER 2021 - Chamber

"[The Beach is] a richly atmospheric work whose Brahmsian echoes are completely absorbed into its own distinctive voice. Both the Beach and the Elgar quintet...receive powerful, expressive performances from the Takacs Quartet and Garrick Ohlsson." - The Sunday Times

"The ensemble brings an extraordinary range and depth of sound to Beach's closely-worked score…Ohlsson and the Takács Quartet are vividly alert to the [Elgar]'s sense of story…This is a performance every bit as imaginative and expressive as Elgar's remarkable score, rich in contrast and daring but never overblown and always precise…This is in every respect an outstanding disc" BBC Music Five Stars - Chamber recording of the Month - July 2020

"[Beach's] Piano Quintet, the most widely performed of her chamber works...is a highly developed work which should be considered part of that canon of quintets led by Schumann and Brahms...This is highly accomplished writing and reveals Beach's true imagination as a master of instrumental form...Ohlsson and the Takács are to be congratulated for the warmth of their interpretation and for their ability to encompass the challenging range of Elgar's complex moods" Editor's Choice Gramophone July 2020

"In fact, both works featured here are treated to the best performances I have heard on disc, the strongly figured and articulated playing bringing out the best of both works. This is aided by the excellent recorded sound achieved by the Hyperion engineers which really brings out the sparkle in performances by Ohlsson and the Takács Quartet." MusicWeb Recommended July 2020