Amadeus Quartet - The RIAS Amadeus Quartet Recordings Vol. 5: Romanticism (2017)

The fifth CD boxed set, Vol. V, from the series The RIAS Amadeus Quartet Recordings is dedicated to nineteenth-century Romantic composers. This six-volume edition presents exclusively first releases on CD.

The Amadeus Quartet included a wider repertoire in the broadcasting studio than in the recording studio. Works by Edvard Grieg and Robert Schumann interpreted by the Amadeus Quartet can be heard here for the first time on CD. And five works in this edition represent novel repertoire that the Amadeus Quartet never recorded on LP: Dvorák's Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, Grieg's String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 27, Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 12, as well as Schumann's String Quartet in A Major, Op. 41, No. 3 and Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44.

Only half the works recorded here belong to the string quartet genre. The Amadeus Quartet enjoyed collaborating with other musicians and did so often. In the three piano quintets by Brahms, Dvorák, and Schumann, they performed together with pianist Conrad Hansen, who had appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwängler in the 1940s. In the string quintets by Brahms and Bruckner, the Amadeus Quartet is joined by South African-born Cecil Aronowitz - the musician they always turned to when in need of a second violist. And in Brahms's Clarinet Quintet we hear Heinrich Geuser, regarded as Germany's leading clarinetist in the 1950s.