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Deutsche Grammophon certainly cannot count among its (many) merits a particular taste for covers. The one you see here on the right, moreover, shines for its dullness.
Let's try, then, to imagine a suitable image to present to the eyes the Slavic and (post?)romantic delight of Antonin Dvořák's music. For me, it is sepia-toned and has grainy edges; it shows a woman in a room, looking at a photo—I can't make out the subject; in the background, much more in focus, an old piano.
It is the opening of the Allegro ma non tanto that is captured by this (ambitious) image. The arpeggios coming from the piano seem like a sigh, gentle and regular, reaching and marrying her embrace, the warm and sinuous body of the cello. A union immediately disrupted by the other strings, which go mad around them, in a phrase of purely Slavic flair, introducing an alternation between the two themes destined to unfold with traditional movements, up to the coda.
But it is the second movement, a 'dumka' Andante con moto, that reveals even more wonderfully the inspiration of the Czech composer, with a sway increasingly wider and more flourishing between the pianistic melancholy (raindrops seem to drip from Menahem Pressler's keyboard: a melody at once suspended and trembling, a true marvel) and the relief of the strings (the balm of the Emerson String Quartet).
The last two movements complete in the animation of a Bohemian folk dance (Scherzo: Molto vivace) and in the lively rhythms of Viennese style (Finale: Allegro) this splendid "Quintet for Piano, 2 Violins, Viola and Cello in A major op.81" (1887) which exemplifies the character of Dvořák's work, balanced between folk nationalism and progress.
The edition also includes the "Piano Quartet Op. 87" (1890) and, in my virtual cover, in that photo—which has the enigmatic quality of the subject of the initial chromaticisms, the calm of the woman/cello admiring it, and the amber liveliness of the context—lies all the magic of this work, which contributes to making Dvořák's chamber music the ideal, illuminated continuation of Schumann and Brahms's journey towards Beauty.
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