你好Even though no one in my family or my extended family was involved in music, I was lucky enough to live in a town where many of the Boston Symphony musicians, including the conductor lived. As a result, the town had an active chamber music society that sponsored string quartets and trios to come and perform at grade schools and from the age of five, I regularly heard them at our early morning school assemblies. Mostly they played Haydn, and Mendelssohn, nothing cutting edge, but I loved it.

For a time I wanted to play the violin, but my parents must have thought hearing me practice would be worse than torture, so it never happened. Instead they bought an old upright piano and I was content to plink around on that until my parents gave me an old 78rpm record player. Long playing records had just come in, and everyone was getting rid of their old 78s, so relatives were more than willing to give me theirs. Suddenly I wanted to play “good music”. My parents decided I should have piano lessons. A teacher came to our apartment every week to teach me.

I liked studying music, but the best part was hearing my teacher play my next week’s assignment for me. But it didn’t have that richness and special intimacy of the chamber music I heard at school. Nor did those old records – my relatives had mostly orchestral music, which seemed narrow and straight-forward, not the back and forth conversation between instruments and the rich blending that so fascinated me at school. It was magical - almost as if the musicians were making it up the music as they went.

What’s in our player now: Debussy: String Quartet in G minor/ Ravel String Quartet in F/ Quartetto Italiano - Philips 420 894-2

Like rediscovering an old friend and not wanting to let them go, I can’t stop playing this. I’m convinced that the Ravel at least was one of those played at school.

There are some works that are so glorious that just a minute or two in their company is enough to inspire you. As wonderful and richly developed, both were the great French composers’ first chamber pieces. Although Debussy never wrote any more (except for some pieces for wind instruments and piano) till much later in his life, Ravel went on directly to write trios and the Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and a Piano trio among other pieces.

You can tell the Quartetto Italiano has had a long acquaintance with both pieces. The radiant warmth of their playing, the absolute sureness of their technique are things of beauty in themselves. And what music they’ve lavished it on. Even though this recording was originally made long ago in 1965, the music making is so enjoyable and spontaneous, it sounds like it was made like yesterday. To sum it up in just four words: Masterful playing on masterworks. Music making of this quality is not to be missed.

J. Mark Goldman