I first heard Elgar's Piano Quintet at a concert at Boxgrove Priory many years ago and was immediately attracted to it. For some reason it has often been disparaged by critics, some of whom no dealt felt that, because of its date of composition (1918-19) Elgar should have been dabbling in serialism and electronic synthesisers, or whatever.

For me, the music is saturated in nostalgia, in mourning for the end of an era and for the 5.5 million young English, French, German and Austrian men who died in the terrible years of 1914-18. It is End of an Era music, rather like Strauss's Four Last Songs of nearly 30 years later.

I already have the work recorded by John Ogdon and the Allegri quartet, Peter Donohoe and the Maggini and Harriet Cohen and the Stratton quartet (1933) but I launched out on the new recording by Piers Lane and the Goldner Quartet, on the grounds that one can never have too many recordings of the Elgar piano quintet. I am glad I did; the Goldner performance is a revelation and knocks spots off all the rivals. Despite all the participants being Australian, they get to the very heart of this complex, multi-faceted but very English score. I love this performance, which is very well recorded (Hyperion) with a model balance between piano and string quartet. The CD also contains the string quartet to which I have never really taken; perhaps the Goldners will convert me.