The Quintet, for pianoforte and strings in F minor and major, is a typical example of the composer's profound learning and immense technical mastery, of his lofty ideal as a musical artist, and of his quite marvellous originality. Judging by such a composition, one would hardly claim the gift of melodic charm for César Franck. He has little or no lyrism, and he seems to be chiefly interested in delivering music from the bondage of the tonic and dominant system, while calling upon each instrument for what is most characteristic in its technical resource. He is thus as far removed as possible from Grieg and the song-and-dance men of recent time. He is a great master of form, but he dramatises the chamber-music forms very much as Beethoven dramatised the symphony, reconciling the claims of structure and emotion with the touch of unmistakable genius. The great Quintet is written for performers whose technique is subject to no limitations. Each part is intensely alive, and at many points the listener's imagination is carried into regions never before opened up. The music proves that the composer understood his medium with extraordinary thoroughness. Some of his audacious progressions, his persistent reduplications, and his rushing unison passages one might, at first blush, call orchestral, yet more careful observation quickly convinces one that they are not orchestral, but that the special kind of eloquence in the music belongs essentially to the particular combination for which it was written. The key system is disconcerting at first. The composer seems to insist that two chords so unlike tonic and dominant as F major and D flat minor (if anyone thinks there is no such key he cannot have studied César Franck) will do just as well for the main props of an extended composition; and he has all the best of the argument. The technical interest of the work is of the keenest from beginning to end; but the poetic interest seems to develop slowly, the imaginative play being nowhere as definite as in the finale, which begins with strong passages of extreme nervous agitation and culminates in a tumultuous _dénoûment_ with strong reiterated insistence on the two chords aforementioned, above which the strings rush towards their point of repose in a unison of unparalleled energy and breadth. The subtle and heavy emotion of the slow movement reminds one of Maeterlinck. César Franck (1822-90) was a Liégeois who migrated to Paris, where he became the founder of the young French school--that school of which Mr. Vincent d'Indy is now the principal ornament. Another follower, much less truly distinguished than d'Indy but better known in this country, is Gabriel Fauré. Franck is the only great composer that Belgium has produced in modern times. The task of interpreting the wonderful Quintet was one of the most formidable that Dr. Brodsky and his associates ever took in hand. But they were equal to the occasion. With such a past master as Mr. Busoni at the pianoforte