Richard Strauss was only 20 in 1884 when he wrote his Piano Quartet in C minor, just one of 75 published scores he had written by that age. Though exceedingly precocious, the young Strauss still was under the influence of Brahms and, to a lesser degree, Beethoven, and it’s Beethoven who emerges as the abiding conscience behind the Piano Quartet. Its formal, four movement structure and dogged theme-and-recapitulation strategy plow no new ground, and indeed, it carries none of the musical clues and cues that would even lead us to identify Strauss as the composer.
This is not the case with Joaquin Turina’s Piano Quartet in A minor, written in 1931. Turina did not have to go through several decades of learning before finding his “voice” and was able to instill a Spanish flavor in nearly all of his music. Moreover, unlike Strauss, Turina had greater experience in writing for small ensembles–quartets, trios, solo instruments–all of which retain the flourishes of Turina’s Spanish coloring. In fact, the Lyric Piano Quartet seems more at home with and artistically attuned to the Turina piece than the Strauss. The Strauss comes across as merely de rigueur and often just plain uninspired. Another downside here is a discernible thinness to the recording ambience that tends to flatten out both performances–a trait common to many recordings of string quartets. The Turina, however, is still very much worth a listen.
