Brahms - String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51 No. 1

In 2003 the Belcea Quartet recorded a nerves-on-a-knife’s-edge account of Brahms’s C minor Quartet (Op 51 No 1) for EMI. Here, more than a decade on, their conception retains its essential ferocity,... — Gramophone Magazine, October 2016 More…

When you have an intelligent, technically almost superhuman ensemble like the Emerson Quartet, playing with obvious feeling for the music, reservations about quartet-style fly out of the window. — BBC Music Magazine More…

The C minor Quartet requires playing of the utmost passion if its complex textures are not to sound clogged, and this is what it receives here, though the delicacy and affection the players... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2009, 4 out of 5 stars More…