Hyperion: CDA67551

“This is the finest recording of Brahms’s Piano Quintet since the electrifying Eschenbach/Amadeus version … Stephen Hough and the Takács Quartet push the music about as far as it can go … one senses from the start that [Hough] is really fired up and the Takács follow him every inch of the way with playing of beguiling tonal sophistication and thrilling intensity … this is an exceptional account of a truly exceptional masterwork … the Takács gently caress and cosset this extraordinary music with a glowing sensitivity and insight … highly recommended, especially to those who normally find Brahms a composer they admire rather than fall in love with” International Record Review

“These new versions from Stephen Hough and the Takács Quartet strike me as even better, and in more modern sound … in both Quintet and Quartet the performers give bright, focused, alert, almost ‘classical’ readings, very different from the ponderous brown studies that marked Brahms performances of yesteryear … this is an altogether recommendable release” BBC Music Magazine

“a model for what chamber music should be” The Guardian

“In the Brahms Second Quartet the Takács fins a most appealing lightness of touch. … the Piano Quintet… has fire and passion aplenty… There's a feeling of coming together of ideas, with these artists… sparking off one another in a very unstudio-ish way.” Gramophone Magazine, Janurary 2008