A recent trip to Washington D.C. included a stop at "Politics and Prose",
a fine independent bookstore featuring a small selection of cds, with STAFF
RECOMMENDATIONS!!!  On this basis I acquired a cd of two Braunfels string
quartets, written in the mid forties.  This is interesting music - the
notes with the cd compare the first quartet to Bartok, while the staff
recommendation described it as Brucknerian.  I vote for Bruckner - some
wonderful romantic passages, reminiscent of Bruckner's one complete (?)
chamber work, but you can here rhythmic echoes of the Hungarian master as
well.  As I say, interesting - and I did not get anything like that hollow
feeling which sometimes follows first listens to impulse purchases, that I
will never listen to THAT one again.

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University