Fitzwilliam String Quartet - Bruckner: Quintet & Quartet - Herald Scotland

THIS fascinating new disc from the revered Fitzwilliam String Quartet with guest violist James Boyd almost reconciles the strands of what I call "the Bruckner problem". The Austrian is a "love him or loathe him" composer whose music, with its massive repetitiveness, accumulations of sound that build and fall away, repeatedly, and monumental structures that are assembled, block by block, into cathedrals of sound, either magnetises or repels music lovers. Opinions over the years have not convinced me there's a half-way house with Bruckner's music: I've never met anyone who "quite likes" Bruckner. What's intriguing in these outstanding performances by the Fitzwilliam Quartet with guest violist James Boyd are the myriad seedbed elements to be heard in the early String Quartet, and just how effectively the colossal Bruckner sound translates into a chamber music idiom in the Quintet. I don't know if this disc will win new converts, but it's curious how well the ‘big canvas' adapts to an intimate scale.