ONSLOW CHERUBINI DIOGENES QUARTET - STRING QUARTETS CD

SKU/Barcode: 761203718726

Germany's CPO label has specialized in the revival of disused repertory from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. It's a worthwhile enterprise in view of the likelihood that it's bound to uncover some number of genuinely top-notch pieces lost to history for one reason or another, the reason all too often being the bias shown toward Germanic repertory for so long. This release by the Munich-based Diogenes Quartet is a case on point: it's enjoyable from start to finish, and it includes a unique work well deserving of more frequent programming, the String Quintet in E minor of Luigi Cherubini, composed in 1837 in the last phase of his life. All three of the quintets here follow not Mozart but Boccherini in their instrumentation, with a second cello (filled by Manuel van der Nahmer, billed as first cellist) instead of a second viola. Those by the Anglo-French composer George Onslow tend to follow Boccherini as well in their melodic orientation, although in the later of the two, the String Quintet No. 21 in G minor, Op. 51, composed in 1834, there are hints of later music: annotator Christian Starke (notes are in German, French, and English) compares the Scherzo (track 6) to Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Schubert's Erlk nig seems another possible model. The thematic material doesn't stick in your head, but the same can't be said of the angular opening of Cherubini's quintet. This work is sui generis. With its highly eventful harmonic scheme it completely diverges from Boccherini, from Mozart and Beethoven (whose quintets Cherubini may not have known at all), or from any other existing models. Nor does it, like other chamber works by composers better known for their operas, consist of a series of first-violin melodies strung together. It certainly qualifies as dramatic, but even the slow sections are contrapuntally conceived. A pairing of this quintet with Verdi's quartet in the same key would make an ideal chamber music program, but the Cherubini could also stand on its own in any number of contexts. With the technically apt and committed performances here, this disc can be strongly recommended to anyone interested in Romantic chamber music.