COLORADO QUARTET RECORDINGS Beethoven | Schubert | Cowell | Contemporary BRAHMS - Two String Quartets, Op. 51 Parnassus Records - PACD 96007 Recorded in The Netherlands in 1991 The Fantastic Reviews Fanfare Magazine American Record Guide | USA Today This Brahms disc had an extended journey in on its way to record stores in the States. We recorded it in January, 1991, in The Netherlands, in a small town called Renswoude. We were in Holland performing, and had arranged to have three days sandwiched between concerts to do this recording. Our wonderful engineer, Jared Sacks, loaded up his little Dutch van with piles of recording equipment and we all headed out into the countryside an hour or so from Amsterdam. The small church that we were to record in had once been part of a nobleman's estate; the manor house was still privately owned, and was flanked by what we assumed were once servants quarters, now turned into rowhouse apartments. We arrived at the church before noon, intending to warm up, get a sound (recording-talk for the minute and seemingly endless adjustments of microphone location and levels by Jared) and put three movements of Brahms on tape. However, it seemed for a while as though Mother Nature had different plans for us. The acoustics in the lovely old church were just perfect to amplify the wind which howled through the steeple, and so we waited. And waited. And rehearsed and ate and waited. Finally, in desperation, we started recording, hoping that if we played loud enough we'd drown out the little bit of *whoosh* that the mikes were still picking up. The happy news is that no, the microphones didn't pick up the wind over our playing, and even though we had to work until close to midnight that day, we got on with the business of recording. The CD appeared later that year as a private release on the Dutch label Stichting Kammermusik, and was available only by subscription (or in the lobby at one of our concerts!) Not until 1997 did we finally get matters arranged so that the two Brahms Quartets could be released on an American label, Parnassus, which is run by the astute Leslie Gerber.