The Brodsky Quartet present the first of two albums that will feature Brahms’s complete string quartets. This recording includes the String Quartet Op. 51 No. 2 with the Clarinet Quintet in B minor. The second string quartet was written alongside its contrasting companion, the String Quartet Op. 51 No. 1.

The Brodsky Quartet, continuing to pioneer unique repertoire on Chandos Records, presents a programme of works from the ‘New World’ that explores an American sound in the string quartet. The earliest piece on the disc is the American String Quartet, in F major by Antonín Dvořák, the only non-American composer in the release.

2014 marks the centenary of Polish-British composer Andrzej Panufnik. Here the Brodsky Quartet joins in this year of reminiscence and celebration with Messages, a recording of works both by Andrzej and his daughter Roxanna Panufnik.

Rocking Horse Road is the début recording of Jacqui Dankworth and the Brodsky quartet, bearing witness to a musical relationship that stretches back almost two decades. Jacqui Dankworth is one of the most highly regarded and celebrated vocalists in the UK. The Sunday Times called her ‘One of our finest singers, regardless of category’, whilst The Guardian noted she ‘exhibits a subtle control of dynamics and a voluptuous tonal richness that seems to make almost any material sound special’.

The set of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin is widely regarded as one of the summits of Bach’s output as a composer, and of the entire repertoire for the violin. With this new album the Brodsky Quartet give us the opportunity to hear some of this legendary music in an entirely new way, in these world-première recordings of Paul Cassidy’s arrangements for string quartet of the three solo sonatas.