Brahms Piano Quartet No. 2 in A, Op. 26.

Mahler Movement for piano quartet. Domus (Krysia Osostowicz, vn; Timothy Boulton, va; Richard Lester, vc; Susan Tomes, pf).

Virgin Classics (Full price) (LP) VC7 90739-1; (Cassette) VC7 90739-4; (CD) VC7 90739-2 (61 minutes: DDD). Later (Cassette) VC7 59144-4; (CD) VC7 59144-2.

After the G minor and C minor works issued last June, Domus have now completed their cycle of Brahms's piano quartets with No. 2 in A, besides offering a rarity that makes this disc something of a collector's piece. Even without that intriguing extra they are in a strong position in the CD field, for the rival Philips version from Richter and the Borodin Quartet (in itself a highly distinguished concert performance in the Touraine Festival's Grange de Meslay) is marred by an unacceptably dry, lack-lustre recording.

As before, the Domus players prove warmly sympathetic Brahmsians, never allowing us to forget the all too susceptible heart beneath the classical facade. If Hanslick could have heard the first movement played with such grace, the second with such intimate mystery and the finale with such exhilaration, never could he have observed that the work's themes were chosen more for their capacity for contrapuntal treatment than on account of their artistic merit. I certainly prefer the newcomers' brisk tempo for the finale to the more deliberate speed chosen by Vasary and his BPO colleagues in their LP performance on DG for the Brahms sesquicentennial edition issued in 1983. Elsewhere I felt that the phrasing of the older, maturer players carries just that little expected extra conviction, each of them emerges a little more of a clearly delineated individual in their closely attuned conversational give and take. That is in part due to their recording. Again, as last June (when I reviewed the First and Third Quartets), I found myself wondering if St Barnabas Church, Woodside Park in North London was the ideal venue for Domus in this music, especially the piano. But all this is revealed only in the closest comparison. Heard on its own, the performance most persuasively conveys all its 28-year-old composer's tranquillity and happiness when writing the work.

Mahler in his turn was a mere teenager, a student at the Vienna Conservatoire, when producing his A minor movement for piano quartet—edited by Peter Ruzicka for publication in 1973. Though Mahler himself included very few performing instructions, the all-important clue is the mit Leidenschaft over the violin's first entry. Though balance goes against Krysia Osostowicz here (as once or twice elsewhere in her higher register) Domus play this laden sonata-form movement with whole-hearted emotional commitment as well as bringing home its impressive architectural shape in their finely graded ascent to, and descent from, the impassioned central climax of the development. The nostalgic mit Dampfer interlude just before the recapitulation is touchingly tender, so is the final farewell.

JOC