The two String Quintets are considered to be among Brahms' greatest chamber works. The first was a favorite of the composer, and he wrote to his publisher that, 'you'll never receive anything more beautiful from me.' The second was written when Brahms had all but retired. When he delivered the work to the publisher he wrote, 'with this note you can take leave of my music, because it is high time to stop.' The Nash Ensemble, having recently celebrated their 40th anniversary, are having something of a golden period. Their previous Onyx discs of Turnage and Mendelssohn received rave reviews.

Piani was well enough regarded in his own time to get hired in Paris and then across the continent in Vienna, where he spent the last four decades of his life. He has been forgotten probably because the group of Sonatas, Op. 1, that are excerpted here are his sole surviving works. With the rise in popularity of Francesco Maria Veracini and the other Italians who took their music to France and England in the early 18th century, Piani is worth getting to know.

Dwarfing even the late Beethoven quartets in sheer length, Schubert's final String Quartet in G major, D. 887, clocks in at nearly an hour of performance time. This ambitious length made it difficult to appreciate in Schubert's Vienna and can even be a test of focus for modern audiences if anything but a superb performance is put forward. Fortunately for listeners of this Onyx album, the Kuss Quartet produces just such a performance. The approach to Schubert offers far more drive, intensity, and grit than the vast majority of recordings available.

This six-CD set is sure to be of interest to fans of Susan Graham, the phenomenally successful American mezzo-soprano. The recordings, with the exception of just a few tracks from the 1990s, were made between 2000 and 2005, and they reveal Graham in her prime. Five of the discs had previously been released, but one is made up of selections from a variety of sources, including complete opera recordings. The set demonstrates Graham's versatility, both stylistically in the many types of music she sings and in the emotional spectrum that the songs and arias encompass. .