Brahms Piano [Quartet] Quartets - No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25; No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60. Domus (Krysia Osostowicz, vn; Timothy Boulton, va; Richard Lester, vc; Susan Tomes, pf).

Virgin Classics (Full price) (LP) VC7 90709-1; (Cassette) VC7 90709-4; (CD) VC7 90709-2 (76 minutes: DDD). Later (Cassette) VC7 59248-4; (CD) VC7 59248-2.

Since their Gramophone Award-winning Faure coupling in 1985 Domus have been reconstituted, with only Krysia Osostowicz (violin) and Susan Tomes (piano) now remaining from the original team. But it's not change of personnel that prevents me from recommending this Brahms issue as warmly as I did the Faure, it's the recording. I had an impression of microphones too close (especially to the piano) in an over-resonant venue (i.e. St Barnabas Church, Woodside Park, London) for the opulent Op. 25. Besides occasional middle or bottom heaviness, individual instrumental timbre is lack-lustre, and texture in bigger climaxes somewhat 'matted'.

This is more apparent in the sumptuously scored G minor Quartet—especially in close comparison with what reached us on CBS from Murray Perahia and members of the Amadeus Quartet last December. No reading could be more ardently romantic than theirs. It was recorded in the very different acoustic (at least as captured by CBS) of Henry Wood Hall. Yet thanks to the players' own subtlety in balance (Perahia is exemplary in this respect), you are able to enjoy an almost orchestral range of dynamics and colour without a second's loss of clarity.

As for the reading itself, I prefer the stronger, bolder impulse of Perahia and his team in the opening Allegro and concluding Rondo alla Zingarese. But despite moments of imperfect balance, I still very much like the tenderer, wistful strain we hear from Domus in the Clara Schumann-inspired Intermezzo, and they also put their whole hearts into a most touching Andante without that occasional sacrifice of a smoothly sustained line that can't be ignored from the Amadeus strings in their determination to make every note speak.

Whereas the Perahia/Amadeus CBS disc goes to the G minor Quartet alone, from Domus we're given Brahms's Third (and last) Piano Quartet in C minor as well—that's to say 76 minutes playing time instead of only 40. Because of its own often leaner, more transparent textures, I was less troubled by the resonance of the recording venue here—though on getting out my old Rubinstein/ Guarneri RCA version (nla) I still realized that 1988 technology could and should have done so much more for newcomers as caring as Domus. Sympathetic programme-notes by the pianist herself remind us of the work's genesis (despite its delayed publication) in Brahms's youthful conflict between loyalty to Robert Schumann, his great champion, and love for Clara. Even if the playing lacks a measure of truly Brahmsian sustained strength and drive, the music's intimately personal undercurrents are always most sensitively and subtly conveyed, not least in the idyllic Andante, and the finale's coda which while reaffirming the key of C major, leaves no doubt that any hope of victory in the music was wholly illusory.

JOC