Their long-awaited international breakthrough? At the latest, the Isidore String Quartet should have enjoyed this when it won the the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022. Founded in 2019 in New York at the Juilliard School and named after Isidore Cohen, the great American chamber musician and member of the Juilliard String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio, the ensemble has made it its mission to approach the familiar repertoire as if it were new, and the new as if it were long established. Yearning, of course, also pervades the musical programme of this Herbstgold debut - even if Felix Mendelssohn was probably completely happy at the time he composed his Opus 44 and, at least in his private life, free of any unfulfilled desire: he was, after all, on his honeymoon at the time, in 1827. Johannes Brahms, on the other hand, never married. Almost half a century later, in his A minor Quartet op. 51/2, he sought to musically support his then wavering friendship with the violinist Joseph Joachim: Brahms had taken the Joachim's wife's side through the couple's divorce. It goes without saying that in this quartet he wanted to pay his respects to the revered master and role model Joseph Haydn, who himself is represented here with a work from his magnificent 'Sun Quartets' Opus 20.