Brahms: String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51 No. 2

‘a model for what chamber music should be’ (The Guardian)

“You could go many a long day without encountering a more overtly romantic composer than the Brahms you meet here.” Gramophone

'When you have an intelligent, technically almost superhuman ensemble like the Emerson Quartet, playing with obvious feeling for the music, reservations about quartet-style fly out of the window.' (BBC Music Magazine)

“This unusual pairing of quartets…is an effective one, and perfectly suited to the strengths of this fine ensemble. The Heine Quartet brings to both works a sustained intensity and wide emotional range, with clean, clear playing and superb balance. The players adroitly negotiate the mood shifts of Brahms…The players show a judicious and effective use of vibrato…they are abetted by an acoustic that allows both satisfying clarity and fullness of sound…a particularly satisfying performance of the Janácek. This is indeed intimate playing…producing a cumulative depth and complexity of feeling that is profoundly moving.”.” Tim Homfray, The Strad “Chamber Selection”

"irresistible in its dramatic sweep and expressive intensity." The Sunday Times

The reviewer of the opus 51 Quartets in Gramophone in September 1990 commented: “… in the tonal mellowness and bloom of the recording itself, not to mention their own intuitively musical phrasing, their intimate interplay and subtleties of balance, this disc somehow manages to bring home Brahms’s true richness as a quartet composer …”.