Customer Reviews

Brahms: Piano Trios Nos. 1, 2 & 3 / Piano Quartets Nos. 1, 2 & 3 (Isaac Stern - A Life in Music, Vol. 21)

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This album is by far the most crisply recorded, lusciously played, and reasonably priced of all recordings of Brahms' chamber music. There is a 2-CD version with just the quartets for marginally less, but this is the one to get. There's plenty written about the recent Ma, Stern, Laredo, Ax effort (hard not to, considering that cast), which won Gramophone Magazine's best chamber album of the year. The trios are of equally fine quality (Stern is just as luminous in this much earlier performance), in rich, dark analogue sound, and make a superb offer in and of themselves. When coupled with the quartets for roughly the same price. . .? You really can't go wrong. A must buy.

This is one of my favorite CD's. Excellent musicianship and sound quality are a bonus. The real draw to this cd, however, is the passionate interpretation the music. They really capture the emotion behind Brahms' music. I would recommend this to anyone who likes chamber music.

I am a casual music lover, and I have simply been bewitched by these recordings. They (as one of the prior commentators noted) capture the passion of Brahms and project it superbly. I find myself coming back to these again and again, and I still find new features of the passages. For music lovers these recordings are a must.

These CD's contain some of the best chamber music ever recorded.
Each member of the ensemble seems to fit in without ever dominating.

If you want to hear how chamber music should be played - get these discs!