It’s been a pleasure
encountering this now little known Decca
recording from 1952. Though they may
not now – or indeed then – have had
the cachet of many of their rivals the
Chigiano were distinguished musicians
and their Brahms is a solid and useful
contribution to the recorded literature.
They don’t have the corporate weight
of, say, the Budapest with their pianistic
associate Clifford Curzon – that slightly
earlier rather boxily recorded 1950
disc is now back on Naxos. And nor are
they infallible; pianist Sergio Lorenzi
has a few Curzon-like moments in the
first movement. And yet this is a likeable
and lean performance, not at all heavy
in the assumed German style. The recording
too tends to complement that approach;
the acoustic is a touch constricted,
not at all boomy.
The performance is
a straight-ahead one; the first violin
essays a few portamenti in the opening
movement but there’s no great or pressing
sense of emotive weight and nor are
they big tonalists in the Russian manner.
Corporate heft is kept to a minimum
but the playing is nicely contoured
and clearly well considered. Of the
string players the viola playing of
Giovanni Leone caught my ear and it’s
Leone who takes the most expressive
moments.
When one compares them
to the Budapest/Curzon team it’s in
the slow movement that one most feels
a slight want of feeling; that the Chigiano,
though slower than the rival quintet,
tend not to inflect so sensitively or
with such agility. The straight and
narrow path is often a laudable one
but sometimes it can come close to under-inflection.
The pianist Lorenzi sounds rather more
diffident than perhaps is ideal and
some string rubati don’t quite work.
Still, this is an unusual
restoration. This group made a highly
regarded recording of the Bloch Quintet
and I hope that Pristine Audio can get
around to this in due course; it’s more
of a priority than the piano quintets
of Shostakovich,
Franck and Dvořák that they also
recorded at around the same time – though
I’m sure there would be interest in
those traversals as well.
The Decca vintage 1952
sound has a great deal of clarity and
textual cleanliness. I like the restorative
work considerably more than Pristine
Audio’s other restorations. I can’t
pretend that this is a sure-fire winner
from an interpretative viewpoint but
it’s certainly good to welcome a forgotten
ensemble back to the catalogue.
This is available in
MP3, and two CD formats as will be reflected
in the price.
Jonathan Woolf
Quintetto Chigiano 
