Takács Quartet, Marc-André Hamelin: Dvořák, Price

The Strad Issue: July 2025

Description: An unusual coupling proves compelling

Musicians: Marc-André Hamelin (piano) Takács Quartet

Works: Dvořák: Piano Quintet no.2. Price: Piano Quintet

Catalogue number: HYPERION CDA68433

The piano quintet as a genre often seems to bring out the best in composers: Dvořák’s second essay in the form certainly belongs among these masterpieces, and here finds a slightly unexpected coupling in the A minor Quintet by Florence Price.

Unexpected but entirely appropriate: both composers delve deeply into the sounds and styles of their respective cultures to create something unmistakably their own, Dvořák via the dumka, contrasting exuberance with a strain of Slavic melancholy, Price with the juba, an irresistibly syncopated African American folk dance. It’s certainly this movement of her quintet – placed third – that will be excerpted and encored.

Otherwise, Price’s work opens with a hefty Allegro melding pentatonic piquancy and bluesy modality with Classical discipline, and continues with an appealing Andante. The scherzo-like finale is a strange squib of a piece that’s over almost as soon as it’s begun.

The Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin perform it with their customary command, responding if anything yet more keenly to its shifting moods than the Kaleidoscope Collective in its fine premiere recording (Chandos, 2021). The same goes for the Dvořák, in which Hamelin and the Takács highlight the Brahmsian energy that powers the music while not forgetting the work’s essential lyricism, most notably in the miraculous dumka second movement.

Transparent sound (in Monmouth’s Wyastone Concert Hall) nevertheless still allows the elemental earthiness of both works to make its mark.

DAVID THREASHER