Piano Quintet (Franck) score open at the piano, a gesture which was interpreted as mark of disdain. The work has been described as having a "torrid emotional power", and Édouard Lalo characterized it as an "explosion". Other critics have been less positively impressed: Roger Scruton has written of the quintet's "unctuous narcissism". There are three movements: The music has a cyclical character whereby a motto theme of two four-bar phrases, used 18 times in the first movement, recurs at strategic point later in the work. Piano Quintet (Franck) César Franck's Piano Quintet in F minor is a quintet for piano, 2 violins, viola,
String Quartet (Elgar) by Adolph Brodsky, in honour of the promise Elgar had made years earlier to write a work for them. However, the members of the Brodsky Quartet were now around 70 years of age. The Quartet's public premiere was given by Albert Sammons and W. H. Reed, violins; Raymond Jeremy, viola; and Felix Salmond, cello on 21 May 1919, at the Wigmore Hall, London, the Piano Quintet in A minor also receiving its premiere on this occasion. The group was billed as the "British String Quartet". (Some sources say the London String Quartet gave the premiere, but Albert Sammons was the