String Quintet in C / String Quartet No. 3 - Recorded at the Maltings, Snape, Aldeburgh, 1977.

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All Regions - Regular 1.33:1 / 4:3 - Linear PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround / DTS 5.1 Surround - Colour - 90 Minutes - NTSC

To be able to see the Amadeus Quartet in full colour, playing congenial repertoire in one of their favourite venues and at the height of their powers, is a wonderful privilege. To those of us who were fortunate enough to attend some of their concerts, it will bring back imperishable memories. For a generation reared since the end of their 40-year career, it will provide some indication of why these four men were so highly regarded by chamber music enthusiasts the world over.

Their début took place on 13 July 1947 in the Great Hall at Dartington Hall in Devon. At that stage they were known to a small but select group of admirers as the Brainin Quartet; but word-of-mouth reports created so much excitement that when they made their London entréas the Amadeus Quartet, at the Wigmore Hall on theafternoon of Saturday 10 January 1948, 200 people had to be turned away.

With hindsight, the processes that broughtthem together look inexorable and inevitable. Three talented young Austrian violinists – Norbert Brainin and Siegmund Nissel, born in Vienna in 1923 and 1922 respectively, and Hans Peter Schidlof (1922-87) from provincial Mödling – came to England as refugees, were interned by the government in the early years of the war and moved into the orbit of an older refugee, the Silesianborn violinist and pedagogue Max Rostal.