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,
New World String Quartet members were: Curtis Macomber and Vahn Armstrong, violins; Robert Dan, viola; and Ross Harbaugh, cello. Members on recordings in the late 1980s and early 1990s included Curtis Macomber and Vahn Armstrong, violins; Benjamin Simon, viola; and Ross Harbaugh, cello. The quartet also recorded a Brahms piano quintet with Derek Han, piano. The quartet won the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation Chamber Music award in 1979. In 1980 the New World String Quartet became the first quartet-in-residence at Harvard University. The quartet was awarded a Grand Prix du Disque in 1991 for their recording of the string quartets of Debussy, Ravel, and