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"Four Stars ... perhaps no clarinetist around today is capable of floating a purer, smoother, more beautifully contoured melodic line than Michael Collins ..." - BBC Music Magazine "Outstanding ... a lovely performance, appreciatively recorded, one to cherish ... the Brodskys are excellent in their intelligent presentation of the music ... recording engineers have brought an intelligent ear to the style of the music and the richness yet lucidity of the playing." - International Record Review "... Michael Collins’s awareness of his role as primus inter pares rather than prima donna is one of the special joys of this outstanding disc. Both he and the Brodskys erase all possible strenuousness and opacity (always dangers in contrapuntal writing) with supreme clarity, vigour and refinement. Finely recorded, this is outstanding even by Collins and the Brodsky’s standards." - Gramophone The first of two volumes from the Brodsky Quartet dedicated to the complete string quartets of Brahms, this album includes the String Quartet No. 2 and the Clarinet Quintet in B Minor. The second string quartet was written alongside its contrasting companion, the String Quartet No. 1, both held back for years by a typically self-doubting Brahms until he had brought them up to his own standards of perfection. Of the two, the second is warmer, more affirmative and relaxed, often looking backward with hints of Baroque devices. The clarinet quintet was the last expansive piece Brahms wrote, composed after his first intended retirement. It explores an atmosphere of elegy and nostalgia, producing a mood of autumnal resignation. The clarinet is rarely treated as a prima donna soloist, rather it is organically integrated into the work’s closely woven textures.