Dvořák & Price: Piano Quintets Takács Quartet & Marc-André Hamelin

• Florence Price (1887 - 1953): Piano Quintet in A Minor:
• 1 Price: Piano Quintet in A Minor: I. Allegro non troppo 13:18
• 2 Price: Piano Quintet in A Minor: II. Andante con moto 06:54
• 3 Price: Piano Quintet in A Minor: III. Juba. Allegro 03:32
• 4 Price: Piano Quintet in A Minor: IV. Scherzo. Allegro – Coda 02:49
• Antonín Dvořák (1841 - 1904): Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81, B. 155:
• 5 Dvořák: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81, B. 155: I. Allegro, ma non tanto 14:05
• 6 Dvořák: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81, B. 155: II. Dumka. Andante con moto 14:02
• 7 Dvořák: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81, B. 155: III. Scherzo (Furiant). Molto vivace 04:25
• 8 Dvořák: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81, B. 155: IV. Allegro 08:01
• Total Runtime 01:07:06

Info for Dvořák & Price: Piano Quintets

The performance Florence Price’s Piano Quintet receives on this eagerly awaited new release from the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin would suggest that it can be only a matter of time before the work—rediscovered only in 2009—is as familiar and much-loved as the one by Dvořák with which it shares the album.

Dvořák composed two piano quintets in the key of A major. The first of them belongs to the chamber works he produced when he was in his late twenties and early thirties, most of which he subsequently destroyed. He was convinced that his piano quintet had suffered the same fate, but it turned up some fifteen years later, and he set about revising it. Despite the many changes he made (most of them involved tightening up what had been a discursive piece with strong traces of the composer’s early fascination with Wagner), Dvořák remained dissatisfied with it, and he made no effort to have it published. Instead, in the autumn of 1887, he reached for a fresh sheet of paper and composed the entirely new Quintet Op 81, which soon became the most popular of all his chamber works with piano.

The warm, relaxed cello theme which unfolds to a gently rippling piano accompaniment at the quintet’s beginning is one of Dvořák’s most genial inspirations, and it is one that seems in retrospect to typify the sunny disposition of the work as a whole. Yet the calm of the opening bars is in actual fact remarkably short-lived: the melody’s second half already introduces a tinge of minor-mode melancholy which provides, perhaps, a foretaste of events to come, and the music’s mood is soon abruptly shattered by a dramatic outburst in the minor. The initial theme eventually makes a return high on the violin, but once it has elapsed the movement’s opening stage remains firmly in the minor throughout, with the second subject heard on the viola, to a stuttering repeated-note accompaniment whose rhythm arises out of the forceful passage that precedes it. The central development section, too, unfolds for the most part in the minor, with the result that a strong undercurrent of unease runs through the movement as a whole. ...

Takács Quartet
Marc-André Hamelin, piano

No biography found.

Booklet for Dvořák & Price: Piano Quintets