The Eliot Quartet offers a reminiscence of César Franck, the magician of sound, on its new recording in co-production with SWR. To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Belgium's greatest composer, the multinational ensemble has combined Franck's only string quartet with his celebrated piano quintet. The friendship between the quartet and pianist Dmitry Ablogin bears musical fruit on this album, as the five musicians weave an intense web of sound between keyboard and strings in the Piano Quintet. Both works here testify César Franck's mastery and ability to conjure vast sweeping lines in the most harmonically and melodically refined late Romantic garb! © Genuin