This 1951 mono recording set the benchmark for many years, and so it probably did much to establish the current, questionable norms of tempo. But it's superb performance, played with skill and sensitivity and unfailingly musical.

This was the first ever recording of VerklärteNacht in its original sextet form and it remains unsurpassed. When it was first reviewed in Gramophone, the late Lionel Salter wrote of it as being 'beautifully played with the most careful attention to details of dynamics and phrasing, with unfailing finesse, with consistently sympathetic tone, and, most important, with a firm sense of the basic structure'. The Schubert too fully deserves its classic status. The tranquillity of the slow movement has never been conveyed with greater nobility or more perfect control.
The Hollywood Quartet made music for the sheer love of it and as a relaxation from their duties in the film-studio orchestras, for which they were conspicuously over-qualified.
They have incomparable ensemble and blend; and their impeccable technical address and consummate tonal refinement silence criticism.
To add to the pleasure, the transfers could not be better.

The Hollywood Quartet's 1951 version Schubert's magical Quintet...stands apart from all others. Over half a century on, its qualities of freshness and poetry, as well as an impeccably confident address, still impress as deeply as ever...This disc is the product of consummate artistry and remains very special indeed.