In their fifth album together on Hyperion records, the extraordinary virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the superb Takács Quartet explore two piano quintets linked by American heritage; one by Florence Price, the first African American woman to have a composition played by a major orchestra, and the other by Antonín Dvorák, whose residency in America during the 1890s made a …

With a discography of well over 100 albums, this release marks Marc-André Hamelin’s first Beethoven recording. The transcendental difficulties of the Hammerklavier — by far Beethoven’s longest piano sonata, and in the composer’s view also his finest — will always deter all but the greatest pianists of the day, with only a select few able to master its formidable musical, …