Mélanie Bonis was born in Paris in 1858. A student of Franck and Guiraud, Debussy and Pierné were her peers at the Conservatoire and Saint-Saëns an admirer. Her early works were well received and she won a number of prizes, but her strict Catholic parents forced her to give up her budding musical career and marry a wealthy, widowed industrialist. She died in the same year as Ravel and Roussel, 1937.

After Haydn composed The Seven Last Words for chamber orchestra as a devotional accompaniment to the Good Friday liturgy at Cadiz Cathedral in 1786, several other arrangements were made during his lifetime, by himself and others, all of them familiar to us now: as an oratorio with soloists and chorus, and in string quartet and solo keyboard transcriptions.

One of the great recent versions of - arguably - the towering string quartets of the 20th century is by frequent Buffalo visitors the Vermeer Quartet. Three decades separate the composition of the first Bartok Quartet from the sixth and last. Not only is the stylistic diversity within them often much exaggerated but so too are the difficulties presented by the third quartet, which, for all its dissonance, is so structurally cohesive (it's the shortest at 15 minutes - half the length of the first, fifth and sixth) that it remains one of the most powerful works in the quartet repertoire.

The importance of Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777) in the development of the classical symphony cannot be underestimated, and his concertos were also significant in the formation of the style of early Viennese classicism. As its chief representative, Wagenseil unites Italian, French and German stylistic elements in his works, as was typical of the 'mixed style' of the early 18th century. Moreover, he is considered one of the perfectors of the gallant-sentimental stylistic epoch which became so essential for the formation of classicism in 18th-century music history.

Louis Spohr's inventive streak is evident in his creation of the double quartet, a novel form that opened the string octet to new textural, antiphonal, and contrapuntal possibilities. However, like many of Spohr's other chamber experiments, his strategies occasionally led him into unintended compositional difficulties, and his results were most successful when he put aesthetic considerations over cleverness. Spohr's showy writing for the first violin, flamboyant and widespread in the Double Quartet No. 1, caused unevenness in the ensemble's balance and exposed the bareness of the other parts.

Warmhearted but clear-eyed, the Schubert Ensemble of London's recordings of the Piano Quartets of Fauré are anything but French performances. Where French performers can parse their emotions down to the most infinitesimal gradation of feeling but are intellectually profoundly superficial, these English performers are intellectually clear and lucid, but their interpretations are still deeply felt.

"The main attraction on this disc is the Berio orchestral arrangement of the Clarinet Sonata op.120/1. Like Schoenberg, it’s a harmonically and melodically “straight” transcription, not a modern re-imagining of the work. Berio, no stranger to orchestrations and adaptations - Puccini’s Turandot, works by Schubert, Mahler, and Verdi - tackled this last major work of Brahms’ for reasons we don’t know. Iosif Raiskin speculates that the tinges of Mahler in late Brahms may have been a reason for the Mahler-loving Berio. Be that as it may, the result is a wonderfully graceful Brahms Clarinet Concerto.

Schumann's Piano Quintet is one of the world's (and my) favorite pieces of chamber music. But the less-outgoing Piano Quartet eventually reveals its secrets, too, and it's another wonderful piece. These are fascinating performances. Menaham Pressler, on leave from the Beaux Arts Trio, blends his Old World charm with the New World energy of the Emerson Quartet.

The well-known British string quartet was founded in 1967 by Kenneth Sillito, who led the ensemble for some twenty years before passing the responsibility to John Georgiadis, at which point the Quartet entered into an exclusive contract with Chandos and made a number of fine recordings. It toured widely abroad and in the UK and was noted for its well-balanced performances. ‘I know this is a disc to be enjoyed again and again. The sound is simply flawless’, wrote the Newcastle Evening Chronicle.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote a significant body of chamber music (the Piano Trio and String Sextet are on Naxos 8.574008). His three String Quartets reflect differing periods of composition. The First marries impetuousness with enticing harmonies and rapt eloquence. The Second, which dates from 1933, is notable for its clarity, rhythmic impetus and melodic directness. The post-war Third is more relaxed, unexpectedly juxtaposing the archaic and modern with a joyful conclusion.

Beethoven’s monumental contribution to Western classical music is celebrated here in this definitive collection marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Surveying the totality of his career and achievement, the Complete Edition spans orchestral, concerto, keyboard, chamber, music for the stage, choral and vocal works, encompassing his most familiar and iconic masterpieces, alongside rarities and recently reconstructed fragments and sketches in world premiere recordings. The roster of artists and ensembles includes some of Beethoven’s greatest contemporary exponents, in performances that have won critical acclaim worldwide.

For CPO the Minguet Quartet has now recorded Suk's complete oeuvre for string quartet with Matthias Kirschnereit joining them for the early piano quintet. From this early quintet, a cosmos of the most wonderful chamber music spreads out before us, now finally documented by a young generation of artists.

When Antonin Dvorák learned to compose, he did it the old-fashioned way – by composing. Although he had written numerous shorter works earlier, the 20-year-old Bohemian bestowed his Opus 1 on a three-movement String Quintet in A minor for pairs of violins and violas plus cello in 1861. The next year, he turned out his Opus 2, a four-movement String Quartet in A major, and over the next 12 years, he wrote six more string quartets. Through them, the listener can follow Dvorák's progress from a talented amateur with an inexhaustible gift for melody and little feel for form to an almost-ready-for-the-big-time composer who'd learned to tighten his structures and control his gift for melody.

Enjoyable as other digital recordings of Beethoven's first quartets are, this new Tokyo set just about pips all rivals to the post. The reason is primarily one of balance, not only within the group itself but also in terms of overall musical judgement – whether relating to tempo, dynamics or emphases, or simply the way the players combine a sense of classical style with an appreciation of Beethoven's startling originality. If you're after a top-ranking digital set of Op 18, you couldn't do better.

Founded in 1969 at the Juilliard School of Music, the Tokyo Quartet have amassed a fine and distinguished array of recordings for various labels, many enthusiastically received. In 2013 they disbanded after their longest serving members, the second violin Kikuei Ikeda and viola Kazuhide Isomura, decided to retire. Their final concert took place in Norfolk, Connecticut on 6 July 2013. For the last ten years of their existence, they were contracted to the Harmonia Mundi stable.