Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 11

Welcome to a rare dalliance with the chamber music of Glinka, the pioneer of patriotic Russian opera including 'Ivan Susanin' (A Life for the Tsar, 1839) then 'Ruslan & Ludmila' (1842), he was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the father of Russian classical music. The mighty Prazaks pay tribute to the foreunner of Rossini and also play Tchaikovsky's 1871 Op. 11 designed for chamber orchestra rather than for the 16 strings of a quartet.

An enchanting programme of Russian music for string quartet from the acclaimed Kuss Quartet. The multiple-composer 'Variations on a Russian folk song' has composers such as Scriabin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov and Lyadov rub shoulders with lesser-known names such as Vitols, Blumenfeld, Ewald, Winkler, Sokolov and Artsybuschev – each composer contributing a variation.

Selections from Tchaikovsky’s 'Album for the Young' frame two 20th-century works: Stravinsky’s effervescent 'Concertino', and Schnittke’s spare and sombre 'Canon in memoriam Igor Stravinsky'. • Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular First String Quartet concludes an ingeniously constructed programme.

Featuring the outstanding State Borodin Quartet.

Includes the founder members Rostislav Dubinsky & Yaroslav Alexandrov violin together with Valtin Berlinsky cello.

Rostropovich (the original cellist), performs in Souvenir de Florence.

"It is a terrible irony" wrote Vladimir Ashkenazy, "that so much suffering and torment bequeathed us so much wonderful music".

Following the death, in 1875, of Ferdinand Laub, the violinist who had led the first performances of his two previous quartets, Tchaikovsky experienced a creative surge that led to the third quartet. After an enthusiastic reception to a performance in Moscow, Tchaikovsky said: "I think I am all written-out … I've begun to repeat myself and can't come up with anything new".

If it was not painful to see a creator if his calibre be torn apart by constant lack of self-confidence, it would almost be ironic, since this is probably the strongest and most intense of his quartets – the masterpiece of the genre.

Tchaikovsky was a composer of music demonstrating profound emotions, a fact which comes through on this recording. The musicians of the Klenke Quartet prove themselves to be the ideal conduit of Tchaikovsky’s personal, almost confessional messages, combining clarity and precision with bright colours and intensity in their playing.