A trio of works demanding repeat listening
The Strad Issue: July 2025
Description: A trio of works demanding repeat listening
Musicians: Ensemble Louise Farrenc
Works: Bonis: Piano Quartet no.1. Farrenc: Piano Quintet no.1. Firsova: Piano Quartet
Catalogue number: CPO 5556242
If the Ensemble Louise Farrenc is unfamiliar, the names of its players may well not be: violinist Mayumi Kanagawa, violist Klaus Christa, cellist Mathias Johansen, bassist Dominik Wagner and pianist Katya Apekisheva were thrown together by chance in 2020 when pandemic travel restrictions came into force, but they then discovered such an artistic synergy that they continued as an ensemble, focused on female composers.
The three mutually complementary works here are played with verve, imagination and technical aplomb. There’s a nice balance in the well-paced slow movement of Farrenc’s First Quintet between warm portamento and clean-lined lucidity; and while Kanagawa’s tone tends slightly towards shrillness in the Scherzo, it doesn’t detract from the overall tautness of the conversation.
In her First Piano Quartet, Bonis takes us into a different sound world, the Intermezzo particularly gorgeously coloured, and its finale given here with elegantly handled taut drama. Its melancholic tension also serves as a compelling backwards echo to Firsova’s 21st-century work, which is here articulated with plenty of atmosphere.
CHARLOTTE GARDNER
Review: Linos Ensemble: Farrenc
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