Dvořák & Price: Piano Quintets

Collaborations between the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin can always be relied on to deliver rather special results, and their fifth Hyperion album together-Piano Quintets by Antonín Dvořák & Florence Price-is no exception. The coupling is inspired: both quintets are major works, vital and invigorating, but while the Dvořák has long been a staple of the chamber music repertoire, Price's is a recent find, one of the composer's manuscripts discovered as recently as 2009, some 70 years or so after it was written and more than 50 years after her death. Pairing it with Dvořák makes for a memorable and life-enhancing album.

The performance Florence Price's Piano Quintet receives on this eagerly awaited new release from the Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin would suggest that it can be only a matter of time before the work-rediscovered only in 2009-is as familiar and much-loved as the one by Dvořák with which it shares the album.