Quintett

The main point of interest here is Hans Werner Henze’s Piano Quintet, completed in 1991 for Peter Serkin and the Guarneri Quartet. It is a substantial work lasting a little more than 20 minutes, and reflecting, Henze says, his experience of 19th-century forms.

The music itself is not in any sense backward-glancing, but it conveys a feeling of continual growth and transformation. Of the three movements, it is perhaps the last that makes the most immediate impression: a ghostly parade of filigree passagework for the piano, and ethereal string harmonics.

At the end, the piece is disturbingly cut off as though in mid-stream – an effect that is the more striking in view of the fact that the preceding movements both come to an emphatic conclusion.