Aron Quartett

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) would write two piano quintets during the course of his career. The first, with its baroque eclecticisms, is indicative of his characteristic film music, with its pathos and capacity for creating scenic spaces. The Second Quintet, composed in Beverly Hills in 1951 and counted as his op.155, is entitled Memories of the Tuscan Countryside. The work is one of cheerful, contemplative serenity, and might be understood as a quiet meditation on nostalgic yearning for his native Italy.

Bruno Walter is probably still known today, well over 50 years after his death, to all music lovers as a great conductor. He came to public attention as a composer primarily in his early Viennese years (1901-1912). In 1903 the famous Rosé Quartet played his String Quartet in D major, and it also took on (with the composer at the piano) the Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor in 1905. Until recently, only movements Nos. 2, 3, and 4 of the quartet survived in Walter's estate. But in the course of the present CD production, the question of the 1st movement arose, and indeed a copy of the entire composition was found in the music collection of the Austrian National Library, which could now be recorded in its entirety by the Aron Quartett! His Piano Quintet was such a great success at the time that the 'star critic' of the Wiener Zeitung, Robert Hirschfeld, gave the work the following praise: 'It is rich in beautiful and deep, peculiar thoughts, passionate in the corner movements, the slow movement, a confession of the soul, flowing from true, heartfelt feelings, is certainly among the most significant that we have encountered in modern chamber music.'