Chamber, Quartets, String Quartets, Brahms (composer)

This is technically flawless playing, and discipline and rigour also shape the interpretations. The plangent harmonies are kept firmly in order…The fine-boned vibrato is disciplined, occasional... — BBC Music Magazine, February 2020, 4 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 5 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

In his orchestrations Matthews makes inspired and sensitive use of string colour and intimate solos…and in Schubert's Ständchen for vocal ensemble, the demure-sounding girls' choir, supported... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2017, 4 out of 5 stars 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…

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…