Piano quartet; piano quintet. Claire-Marie Le Guay (piano), Mandelring Quartett Audite SACD 92.574

The obsessive patterning of Schumann’s early output has been much commented on. His first 23 opus numbers were devoted to the piano, and he followed this with clutches of songs, orchestral works and chamber music. Less widely celebrated is the fact that during his outburst of chamber music, he effectively launched a new genre: the piano quintet, which dramatically combines keyboard and string quartet. Much earlier efforts for this scoring by Tommaso Giordani (teacher of John Field) had made little musical impact. Schumann’s Quintet and the later (by six weeks) Piano Quartet have white-hot moments that can tempt performers into overplaying them. French pianist Claire-Marie Le Guay and the German Mandelring Quartett take a nicely balanced approach that’s both fiery and sensitive.

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