David Cairns
The Sunday Times
February 2017

Chamber music ranked low in the priorities of the Russian nationalists, but Borodin, who studied in Germany before he joined the Mighty Handful, saw no reason not to compose it. The Piano Quintet (1862), with its very Russian five-bar opening theme, is engaging and skilfully crafted, even if it can’t compare with Brahms’s or Schumann’s, and Piers Lane and the excellent Goldners make the most of it, as they do of the attractively tuneful second quartet.