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Brass quartets can be most rewarding, as I discovered with the recent Tetraphonics disc of 20th-century music for four saxophones. Far from being an assault on the ears it turned out to be chockful of challenging music very well played [review]. But at least there is some original music for sax quartet, which is not the case with trombones. Hence the Munich quartet’s Thomas Horch decided to make his own arrangements of pieces written for other instruments and ensembles.

An arranger and academic Horch is no mean player either, having been principal trombonist with the Berlin Philharmonic from 1987 to 1989. At the time this recording was made – in 1996 – Dany Bonvin and Uli Pförtsch were principals with the Munich Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra respectively, while Volker Hensiek played bass trombone in the Bamberg Symphony.

As much as I wanted to enjoy the earlier items I found there simply wasn’t enough variety of timbre and dynamic to hold my attention for long. The Praetorius dances – two ballets, a galliard and a courant – are all despatched in ringing style but there is an relentless quality to the music-making that may deter all but the most dedicated brass fans. Yes, the Bach Prelude and Fugue is neatly done, the opening of the prelude especially sonorous, but there is little character here. The fugue fares rather better, with some deft articulation, but ultimately it all seems a little bloodless.

The Boismortier – originally scored for three flutes and continuo – is cast in the form Adagio-Allegro-Largo-Allegro, the faster movements full of brio and bite, the Largo characterised by a pleasing instrumental blend and real gravitas. Perhaps a warmer, more expansive acoustic might have helped to tame the trombones’ natural edge, especially in the more exposed upper registers.

Some extra ‘air’ would certainly been welcome in the ‘horn call’ at 4:06 in the Rossini but that said the players achieve some wonderful, rich sonorities in the run-up to the famous gallop. The latter is dashed off in great style; surely one of the more invigorating and infectious arrangements on this disc.

Curiously Barber’s Adagio, derived from the second movement of his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, has become synonymous with sadness and tragedy. Indeed, listeners of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme voted it the ‘saddest’ piece of classical music ever written. The natural timbre of the trombone – especially in the lower registers – may lend itself to mourning but to their credit the Munich quartet invest the long, flowing melodies with a genuine sense of nobility. The climax is splendid but it’s the gentle ending that is most moving. This really is exceptional playing, sensitively done.

The Petite Suite is not the work Debussy wrote for four hands in 1869 but a suite of the arranger’s own choosing. First up is the delightful Minstrels from Book I of the Préludes. Delectably sprung, the piece has all the harmonic colouring of the piano original plus a real sense of fun. Taken from the same book The Girl with the Flaxen Hair is rather more serene – after all it is marked Très calme et doucement espressif – eliciting some secure and surprisingly tender playing. There’s nothing restrained about the jazz-inflected rhythms of Golliwog’s Cakewalk, from Children’s Corner (1908). Again the quartet bring a welcome degree of spontaneity to the music, especially in the staccato chords that pepper the piece.

They also rise to the rather different rhythmic challenges of Brahms’s 3rd and 4th Hungarian Dances, which come across with plenty of vigour. As a foil to this Magyar moodiness comes the Italianate warmth of the overture to Donizetti’s comic masterpiece Don Pasquale. Full of wit and point this is a real test of the trombonists’ expressive skills. Needless to say they are more than equal to the task.

This disc gets better with repeated listening, but I still feel the early pieces are the least successful. From the Barber onwards matters improve, though; it’s impossible not to smile at the humour of the Cakewalk or bask in the genial warmth of Pasquale. The liner-notes – in English and German – are surprisingly informal, which gives you a pretty good idea of the players’ approach to the music. Well worth a spin, even if this isn’t your usual fare.

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This CD is something of a trap for the unwary, for those (like me) who put the disc on without reading the liner-notes properly. The first track consists of the first movement of Schumann’s Sechs Lieder, Op. 33 for four-part male-voice chorus. At the end of the movement, Schumann’s final phrase repeats accompanied by a rasp of percussion. This continues and develops until we are in an entirely new world.

At this point your reviewer returned to the liner-notes and read them properly. The disc by Die Meistersinger and Detmolder Hornquartett consists of Schumann’s Sechs Lieder, Op. 33 and his Fünf Gesänge, Op. 137 for four-part male-voice chorus and four horns. In addition they perform Uwe Kremp’s ‘…tief im blauen Traum…’ four-part male voice chorus and two percussionists and Mark Anton Moebius’s Fluchtpunkte eines Jägers for four-part male-voice chorus, baritone solo, cor anglais and horn. The point to understand from the notes is that the movements of the Uwe Kremp piece are interleaved with the Op. 33 lieder, so that the effect I perceived at the end of the 1st Schumann movement was deliberate. Similarly Moebius’s piece is interleaved with the movements of Schumann’s Op. 137.

Die Meistersinger is a male voice choir which has its origins in the Gächinger Kantorei. The ensemble was founded in 1998 and has been conducted by Klaus Breuninger ever since then. They have made a number of discs but this fascinating one seems to be their way of trying to re-vitalise the tradition of the male-voice chorus.

Schumann’s works in this genre date from 1840 and seem to have been written for the Leipzig Men’s Choir Association for whom Mendelssohn’s Op. 50 Lieder were written. We know that in 1836 Schumann, Mendelssohn and friends tried out Mendelssohn’s four-part male voice choir pieces - presumably singing one to a part - and Schumann’s letters suggest that this might be the case also for his own pieces. This would make sense as we know that Mendelssohn tried out some of Schumann’s solo songs before their publication.

The resulting pieces have a robust charm and their particular genre has an atmosphere redolent of the men’s associations, glee clubs and the like. I know that Schumann’s pieces are far more sophisticated than glees, but the very particular sound of the male voice chorus does give rise to these thoughts.

It is thus understandable that the performers should seek to vary the diet by interspersing Schumann’s Six Lieder with Uwe Kremp’s Intermezzi. Kremp studied composition in Karlsruhe with Mathis Spahlinger and Wolfgang Rihm. Kremp’s Intermezzi use fragments of Schumann’s texts, usually taken from the previous verse, to create a dream like extension of the Schumann pieces. Gradually, as the Intermezzi proceed, Kremp dismantles the linguistic elements so that by the end the choir are just singing sounds, not sense. Into this mix, Kremp adds two percussionists “to create an additional resonance space for the noise-like aspects of the consonants in language”.

The results are fascinating and make for an interesting mix; we end up listening to the Schumann pieces with new ears. I am not entirely sure that the experiment works completely, but it is certainly worth making and very much worth listening to.

Schumann’s Op.137 songs for male-voice choir and French Horns are directly related to the Forest Scenes Op.82. The texts come from Heinrich Laube’s Hunting Breviary and the pieces inhabit that Romantic huntsman’s world which was tapped into by Weber and others. Mark Anton Moebius’s Fluchtpunkte eines Jägers (Vanishing Points of a Hunter), uses a combination of voices, horn and cor anglais to link the Schumann items.

Moebius uses a text taken from Rilke’s Eight Duino Elegy to create a series of pieces which meditate on the confrontation between man and animal, his intention being to illuminate the moment when the hunter looks the animal in the eye and recognises himself in it. Like the Kremp/Schumann combination, this is a potent mix which allows us to view and hear the Schumman pieces differently. The solo part requires the singer to mix both baritone and counter-tenor registers, something Hubert Wild does brilliantly.

Not everyone will like this experiment. Kremp and Moebius’s pieces can be difficult but are quite approachable, but their alternation with Schumann’s music will not be to all tastes. Personally I found it intriguing and fascinating, but would sometimes be tempted to re-programme my CD player so that I could get the Schumann pieces on their own.

Die Meistersinger under their conductor Klaus Beuninger are excellent, managing to perform both the Schumann and the contemporary piece as if they had been performing them all their lives. There was so sense of disjunction between the performances of the Schumann and the modern works, which is quite an achievement.

This is a fascinating disc and if you are open to experiment then you are sure to find much here, especially with such confident performances.

Si Brahms n'a abordé le quatuor à cordes qu'après un par-cours long et détourné, l'alchimie thématique et l'interférence des rythmes binaires et ternaires se voient portées dans son Troisième Quatuor à cordes en si bémol majeur op. 67 (1873-1876) à de rares sommets. Malgré l'alacrité des motifs initiaux et la densité de la texture se fait jour une incroyable légèreté, où le compositeur offre la preuve que la thématique la plus logique est compatible avec le charme. Epoux d'Elisabeth von Stockhausen, élève et grande amie de Brahms, Heinrich von Herzogenberg s'inscrit dans la descendance de Mendelssohn, Schumann et Brahms. Mais là où Brahms innove, Herzogenberg s'en tient dans son Premier Quatuor à cordes en sol mineur à une écriture savante mais un rien académique.

Excellente jeune formation allemande, le Quatuor Mandelring poursuit son intégrale en couplant chaque fois un quatuor de Brahms avec un quatuor d'un de ses contemporains. Sans éclipser les sommets de la discographie (Quatuors Juilliard. Amadeus, Alban Berg, Prazak), son interprétation du Troisième Quatuor en si bémol majeur est une fort belle réussite, où la maîtrise technique et le sens de l'architecture, assez proche de celui du Quatuor de Leipzig, se marient à une acuité intellectuelle qui s'inscrit dans une tout autre filiation – celle du Quatuor LaSalle –, a priori très éloignée de la tradition germanique. Le rythme est aussi tendu, les voix internes aussi équilibrées dans une lecture du Quatuor op 42 n° 1 de Herzogenberg qui parvient presque à réhabiliter l'œuvre.

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