Precocious Talent

This BBC Music mag cover disk is one of those featuring chamber music played by the current crop of Radio 3 New Generation Artists. Two very substantial pieces feature, Mendelssohn's Octet and Schubert's Trout Quintet. I have already posted about a commercial recording of the Trout Quintet but this version by up and coming young players is well worth a hearing. The quintet is made up of Martin Helmchen piano, Alina Ibragimova violin, Antoine Tamstit viola, Christian Poltera cello and luis Cabrera Double bass. I was considering purchasing a recording of the Mendelssohn Octet when this disk arrived and the performance here by the combined forces of the Royal String Quartet and the Psophos Quartet is of sufficient quality to make another purchase superfluous. Previous attempts at writing an octet, such as that by Spohr, tended to have the two string quartets as seperate entities but in his piece, Mendelssohn fuses all eight instruments into a performing whole. It maybe a commonplace to state that it is a remarkable work to have been produced by a 16 year old but when you give serious consideration to that fact, it does remain noteworthy. One of the more rewarding of the magazine's monthly ventures.