Early Bests: Groups with Glamour

We’re only two months into the year, but already the shelf is filling up with chamber music CDs that are likely to make many reviewers’ best of the year lists: It’s all in the names, which include some of the most glamorous in the field.

The Emerson String Quartet continues its winning ways with grandly dramatic, effusively lyrical readings of the Schumann Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet. Maintaining ensemble identity is hardly easy when the pianist is the scene-stealing Menahem Pressler, best known for his leadership of the Beaux Arts Trio. But while Pressler tends to be an overwhelming presence in the trio these days, he is the perfect team player here, alternating the functions of leader and listener (Deutsche Grammophon 445 848).

The Tokyo String Quartet likewise remains true to form in a package of all six Bartok Quartets and the two by Janacek (RCA Victor 68286, three CDs). But where the Emersons are increasingly able to temper their natural ebullience, even aggressiveness, with reflectiveness, the Tokyo’s glossy sound and benign personality has become a constant. It’s too much of a lovely thing in these harder-edged works of the 20th century. Don’t miss the Tokyo’s coupling of the Brahms quartets in C minor and B-flat, in a budget reissue (Vox 8200). This 1986 recording remains a model of passionate eloquence, and elegance.

It’s star time rather than ensemble time in a new recording (Sony 61984) of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet. The cast comprises pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Pamela Frank, violist Rebecca Young, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and bassist Edgar Meyer. Of course they play well, but they also fail to project much of the score’s fun and charm in their strait-laced (Ax’s laces being straitest of all), pushy reading.

The all-Schubert program further includes Ma and Ax delivering a pleasantly relaxed “Arpeggione” Sonata and soprano Barbara Bonney and Ax in a strangely somber “Die Forelle,” the jolly song on which the “Trout” Quintet’s variations are based.

There’s presumed star power, too, in a Schumann program, again offering the Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet, recorded live in Holland by EMI (55484, two CDs). The central figure is pianist Martha Argerich, who offers fiery, profoundly involved playing in the Quintet and in the Sonata, Opus 121. In both, however, violinist Dora Schwarzberg’s vibrato-laden tone is poorly matched to Argerich’s lean propulsiveness, while cellist Natalia Gutman sinks the Quartet with her mannered dynamics and wayward rhythms.

The most successful component of the set is an exquisitely songful “Fantasiestucke,” Opus 73, from Argerich and violist Nobuko Imai. It deserves better than to be buried in this otherwise unappetizing package.

Some prominent violinists have been discovering the long-neglected sonatas for violin and piano dating from Schumann’s last years, when madness gradually silenced his creative voice. The latest of these violinists is Mark Kaplan, best known as a member of the excellent Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio. He and pianist Anton Kuerti, with their shapely, committed playing, offer the most convincing recorded evidence to date (Arabesque 6662) of the anguished lyricism and dramatic strength beneath the disorderly exteriors of all three works.

Forget for a moment the big-name performers and consider one of the still underexposed glories of the Late Romantic repertory: Dvorak’s Quartet in G, Opus 106, which has received two new recordings, both on budget labels, by Czech ensembles with distinguished heritages.

The Vlach Quartet is the second group with that name, the first having been founded and led by Josef Vlach, whose daughter, Jana Vlach, heads the current group. The Travnicek Quartet takes its name from its teacher, Jiri Travnicek, first violinist of the late, lamented Janacek Quartet.

The Dvorak recordings by both these groups are at least as effective as their pricier competition. The Vlach’s (Naxos 553371) is hardly a miracle of organization, but the enthusiasm of the players is disarming. The Travniceks (on Discover International 920248) have their material under better control, and theirs is a grandly affectionate performance, although the recording itself is strident.

The coupling in each instance is Dvorak’s hyper-familiar “American” Quartet.