Carpe Diem Quartet   Naxos 8.572421* * * *

You would expect a composer who was taught by Tchaikovsky (and succeeded him as a composition teacher in the Moscow Conservatory), and who himself taught Rachmaninov and Scriabin, would be a well-known name. But Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev (1856-1915) is little known outside of his native Russia. He set himself apart from the nationalist trends of his time, and the tone of his music is quite Germanic. Taneyev’s work shows an especial fondness for counterpoint (on which he wrote an important treatise), and he has been called “the greatest polyphonist after Bach” by no less a figure than Mikhail Pletnev. The American Carpe Diem Quartet is surveying his six string quartets for Naxos. This second instalment (of works from 1895 and 1899) shows the players to be finely in tune with a style in which the material may not be particularly distinguished, but the workmanship is often exquisite. See url.ie/af6o