| String Quintet in G, Op.77 | |||
| 1 | Allegro con fuoco – Più mosso | 11. 27 | |
| 2 | Scherzo (Allegro vivace) – Trio | 7. 58 | |
| 3 | Poco andante | 7. 36 | |
| 4 | Finale (Allegro assai) | 7. 14 | |
| 5 | Nocturne Op.40 | 6. 04 | |
| String Quintet in E flat, Op.97 | |||
| 6 | Movement 2 : Allegro vivo (Scherzo) | 5. 24 | |
| Total playing time: | 46.02 | ||

Dvorák – the inspired craftsman "Conceiving an idea is, in and of itself, nothing special. It simply comes to you. And if it is beautiful, and great, it is not a human achievement, anyway. On the other hand, executing the idea well and creating something great from it: that is the difficult part – that is art!" Antonín Dvo?ák was deeply convinced that compositional craftsmanship was more important than naked inspiration, regardless how brilliant. Clearly resembling his friend Johannes Brahms in this, Dvo?ák invested much time and energy in the compositional process proper. This extremely intensive involvement with the musical text, this process of sketching, initial notation, rejection, summing up in words, conscious revision and instrumentation, nevertheless remains virtually undetectable behind Dvo?ák's music, so that the daily strenuous efforts of the composer as he worked at shaping his material goes completely unnoticed to the listener. And it is this very aspect which contributed substantially to a caricaturesque impression of Dvo?ák as a Bohemian (folk) musician who gave free reign to his musical talent and naiveté, a stereotype which long blocked the way to an undistorted view of his compositional achievements, including that in the field of genre development. In addition to his operatic and symphonic works, Dvo?ák's oeuvre also includes a third component, which remained consistently present throughout his entire creative life: chamber music. And in this connection, it was the genre of the string quartet that particularly formed a common thread, and also served as a kind of testbed for trying out compositional solutions on a small scale. |
“The beauty of this piano-playing sneaks up on you….One telling example of her over-arching view is the consistency of her sforzandos; they never come crashing down, as one is used to hearing in Beethoven, but rather land with all the notes evenly revealed and intact, still loud and even biting, but not clangy…The very idea that someone can still play this music and introduce a new perspective is remarkable enough.”
Peter Burwasser , Fanfare
The first things that struck me on first playing was the sonic quality and remarkable playing.
This is 25 year old Beethoven sounding like any of the later numbers
Raffels, Sa-CD.net
“Kodama commands the pieces in excellent fashion with artistry, passion, and a true love of the material that shines through a wonderful, expressive, and emotional mix. This is not a mix that is playful, it’s designed to simply capture the music in such a neutral and natural sense that it gets out of the way and just lets the music exist”.
Nate Goss, fulviewdrive-in.com
“Ms. Kodama brings a canny, graceful style to these early--though iconoclastic--works of Beethoven, a graded, assiduous sense of rhythm and tempered dynamics”.
Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition
“Young Japanese pianist Mari Kodama continues her recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas with this issue of the three of Op. 2 .. Already she has recorded three SACDs for Pentatone containing nine other sonatas. Excellent performances all, and very well recorded with larger than life surround sound”.
Robert Benson, ClassicalCDreview.com