The London Flat

The release of this album in 2005 coincided with Dave Brubeck turning 85 !!! The ten songs offer a veritable tour through the whole of the pianist's strengths, both as a composer and an improviser. Recorded in 2004, he's working in his favored and most celebrated format, a quartet, with saxophonist Bobby Militello offering the melodic counterpoint to Brubeck's playing. The earliest number, "Ballad of the Rhine," was written in 1945 when Brubeck was in the army and stationed in Germany. It was inspired by the rhythms of the tanks and trucks crossing bridges over the Rhine. His writing has always been anchored by a rich background in classical music (he studied with the French composer Darius Milhuad). Far from being an album mired in twilight of nostalgia, London Flat, London Sharp proves that Dave Brubeck was still a formidable presence in 2004.

Haydn wrote his six ‘Apponyi’ quartets in 1793, for performance during his second London visit the following year. This is a world in which the members of The London Haydn Quartet are very much at home, and they bring all their usual attentive enthusiasm to these masterpieces.

Famed for his clarity of line and purity of tone, Gottlieb Wallisch moves from Mozart to his contemporary Haydn for his fourth recording with Linn.

The London Haydn Quartet’s recordings of their namesake continue to win universal plaudits, consistently delivering—in the words of The Guardian—‘too many pleasures to enumerate. Try for yourself.’

The London Haydn Quartet turns to the six Op 50 quartets. More serious—intellectually taut—than the Op 33 ‘Russian’ quartets which they follow in Haydn’s output, these six ‘Prussian’ quartets dazzle in such committed performances as these.

Thanks to his exceptional talent as a clarinetist, the Finnish-born composer Bernard Henrik Crusell made it very quickly from his home village, Uusikaupunki, to the metropolis of Stockholm, where he spent the rest of his life, mainly as a member of the orchestra of the Swedish Royal Court. His travels brought him to Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Paris, cities in whcih he made the acquaintance of many great musicians and instrument builders. His works for the clarinet were widely known in the musical circles of the first part of the 19th century.

The London Haydn Quartet reaches the six great quartets published in 1788 as Opp 54 & 55 in another unmissable two-for-the-price-of-one set. Is it possible to have too much Haydn? The only sensible answer is ‘no’, especially when the music is performed with such intelligence and humanity as here.