Poor Borodin. It’s impossible to listen to his 1881 String Quartet No 2 in D major without hearing the ghastly musical Kismet. In 1953, Robert Wright and George Forrest shamelessly plundered the Scherzo for Baubles, Bangles and Beads, and the Notturno for And This Is My Beloved, staining these lovely melodies indelibly into the minds of millions of radio listeners, and discarding the rest of the finely crafted quartet, elegantly played here by the Goldners. Their fellow Australian Piers Lane joins them for the handsome Piano Quintet in C minor from 1862, and features again with the fluent Julian Smiles for the Cello Sonata in B minor, incomplete until 1982 when Mikhail Goldstein made this engaging reconstruction.
