This chamber collaboration
came in 1979, toward the end of Felicja
Blumental’s active recording career.
She was seventy-one at the time but
was still in characteristically fine
fettle and proves an excellent colleague.
This series of Brana restorations usually
shows her as a concerto or concertante
soloist but she was a most adept partner,
capable of phrasal plasticity and sympathy
and so it proves here.
The brace of piano
quintets includes the F major by Anton
Rubinstein, as a proponent of whose
music she was loyal, imaginative and
successful – as other Brana releases
attest. She has the support of some
stellar London wind players, drawn from
the ranks of the New Philharmonia whose
name they took as a working group. The
recording captured them with good balance
and blend. This is nowhere more apparent
than in the big-boned but lyrical opening
movement, where they judge its blend
of rhetoric and romantic reprieve with
acumen. Blumental’s witty piano flecks
the Scherzo with Brooke’s lugubrious
bassoon (Brana misspell his surname)
in the trio section adding incorrigible
wit to the proceedings. Do listen to
her supportive rolled chords as she
accompanies his plaintive song. Nicolas
Busch stars in the slow movement, which
he takes at a good and bracing tempo
and one can admire the tact and security
of the contributions of Morris and McCaw
in the finale. Here the slower section
is well controlled within a lyric framework;
they seem invariably the find just the
right tempo variations to make this
quintet work.
The companion work,
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Quintet was published
posthumously. It’s a less obviously
imposing, three movement work but mellifluousness
is its middle name. The Allegro flows
with liquid ease, its romantic affiliations
clear but much lighter and less pressing
than the Rubinstein. The slow movement
has an airy grace and an Elysian quality,
all glinty and colouristic and also
some folk motifs that spice the score.
The finale opens as a springy promenade
and develops flexible and imaginative
drive. Maybe not a profound work and
one that doesn’t touch the depths –
but tremendously good fun and played
here with panache and great skill.
The notes are not extensive
but they’re to the point. The recordings
were first class back in 1979 and the
remastering has done them proud. Plaudits
all round.
Jonathan Woolf
Felicja Blumental (piano) 
