Toru Kawakami, Iku Miwa Brahms & Franck

Since it was founded in 2015, this vivacious trio has revelled in big ideas and committed itself to refreshing great works of the piano trio repertory with a new dynamic. Following its debut recording of the complete Beethoven piano trios, no less, Trio Sōra has now delved into all that Brahms has to offer in the oeuvre for its second album, this Nme on the La Dolce Volta label.

The gifted Belgian Quatuor Danel turn to two masterpieces by César Franck: his passionate Piano Quintet and the String Quartet. The three-movement Quintet, like Brahms’s op. 34 an expansion of the Schumannian model, is one of Franck’s most infamous works. It immediately established itself, and a second performance with the pianist Marie Poitevin, the later dedicatee of the Prélude, Choral et Fugue, convinced the members of the Société Nationale. Franck’s String Quartet, his last major work, was similarly acclaimed by its first listeners. After its first performance in April 1890, with tears in his eyes, César Franck is said to have told his pupil Vincent d’Indy, “Now you see: at long last the public is beginning to understand me.”

The gifted Belgian Quatuor Danel turn to two masterpieces by César Franck: his passionate Piano Quintet and the String Quartet. The three-movement Quintet, like Brahms’s op. 34 an expansion of the Schumannian model, is one of Franck’s most infamous works. It immediately established itself, and a second performance with the pianist Marie Poitevin, the later dedicatee of the Prélude, Choral et Fugue, convinced the members of the Société Nationale. Franck’s String Quartet, his last major work, was similarly acclaimed by its first listeners. After its first performance in April 1890, with tears in his eyes, César Franck is said to have told his pupil Vincent d’Indy, “Now you see: at long last the public is beginning to understand me.”