With any luck, Russian composer Anton Arensky might finally get the Grammy his music deserves. On October 25, the Ying Quartet is scheduled to release its CD, "Ying Quartet Plays Anton Arensky," to mark the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth. The CD is deserving of major award consideration, so arresting is the vitality and beauty that the quartet breathed into the works of this lesser-known Russian master.

"I would say that as a writer of counterpoint, Arensky was superior to Tchaikovsky, at least as to his chamber music," says David Ying, cellist in the group, which remains quartet-in-residence at the Eastman School of Music. "Arensky was known in his day to be very, very talented. It's because he didn't live long that he's not as big as Tchaikovsky." (Arensky died in 1906 at age 44.)

The CD contains Arensky's String Quartet No. 1 in G Major, Op. 11, String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 35, and Piano Quintet in D Major, Op. 51. Joining David Ying in the Ying Quartet Ayano Ninomiya and Janet Ying, violins, and Phillip Ying, viola. Pianist Adam Neiman joins the musicians for the Piano Quintet.

I was fortunate to preview four of the tracks as part of this article, and I simply could not get enough of the third movement of the Piano Quintet. Marked "Allegro Vivace" (briskly, with life), it is perfect. Clean, bright, and brisk - all the elements you would want out of this tempo marking. And it is gushing with a lusty Russian vivos, reflecting the score's soulfulness and cheeriness, the juxtaposed characteristics appropriate to a Russian romantic composer like Arensky.

Anton Stepanovich Arensky (1861-1906) lived at a time of great Russian composers. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), just 20 years his senior, was having his works performed in all the great cities of Russia from Moscow to Odessa, in a musical scene that included Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881). Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was one of Arensky's teachers while he attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory, from which Arensky graduated in 1882 with a gold medal in composition. Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945), also a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, was only a few years Arensky's junior. Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) later became Arensky's pupils of harmony and counterpoint at the Moscow Conservatory.

To overlook Arensky's place in romantic classical music would be to skip a beat - an opinion that may not have been shared by all. Arensky's teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, said in his memoirs, "Chronicle of My Musical Life," that Arensky "would soon be forgotten."

But according to David Brown, in his book, "Tchaikovsky: The Final Years," "In 1890 [Tchaikovsky] wrote to Arensky, à propos his opera, ‘A Dream on the Volga,' a letter of praise so warm and unqualified that the overwhelmed composer rushed from Moscow to Tchaikovsky's home at Frolovskoye to express his thanks." Arensky dedicated his second string quartet to Tchaikovsky, and its second movement is a set of variations on Tchaikovsky's "Legend Christ in His Garden" from Tchaikovsky's "Children's Songs," Op. 54.

Creating such the CD was a multi-year process. The record label Sono Luminus approached the Ying Quartet with the request for the Arensky CD and, as David says, "We had to decide if it was music that we felt strongly about."

While this is not the quartet's first CD, the permanent nature of recording versus live performances has remained part of the group's evaluation process. "It took us a number of years to build up the courage to want to record [our first CD]," says David. "We had been playing professionally for 10 years. We had been learning so much, our musicianship was developing, we weren't sure that we wanted to record. It's there for posterity."

The ongoing changes to the recorded-music industry were also a consideration. "The rules are being remade," says David. "There was a time when recordings were only done by the biggest companies of the biggest-named musicians, and they were the gatekeepers."

As a next logical step, the Ying Quartet played some of Arensky's work in concert, performing the String Quartet No. 1 in Rochester in the fall of 2010 and the String Quartet No. 2 the following spring. On October 17, 2010, the Yings performed Arensky's String Quartet No. 1 at Kilbourn Hall to a standing-room-only crowd. It was the quartet's first Rochester concert with its newest member, violinist Ayano Ninomiya, and the Arensky was the first piece on the program. My scribbled notes from the concert began, "1st rip she was off!" and, "How can she produce so much sound?" At the end of the first movement, "Allegro," the audience broke ranks and applauded out of turn.

(What that audience will want to know is that the new CD recording is an even deeper interpretation of the piece and really shows off how well the group has come to work together since Ninomiya joined in 2010.)

Once the group had put in extra practice and live performances, the quartet headed into the recording studio for a solid week. "We start at 9:30 or 10 in the morning, take a little lunch break, and play until we can't really concentrate any more," says David of the recording process. For the musicians, who were grabbing a grape or a handful of trail mix between takes, it was bows to the grindstone.

When recording, the Ying Quartet doesn't typically do more than about three takes in a row of a particular movement or section. "To be perfect is one thing and that's great," says David, "but perfect but dry and lifeless would be equally as bad to us."

During the recording sessions, quartet members would occasionally go back into the recording booth to listen to some of the playbacks. "It's not your sound," says David, "It's the recorded sound. The microphones are cruel and honest to the point of nakedness. If you don't play well together, it's not going to help you."

As with too many takes, the Ying Quartet does not like too much editing, which can "ruin the flow" if there is too much cutting and pasting, David says. "We're trying super hard on every single take, so we're not objective."

That's where the producer comes in to play, the trusted advisor who listens to the tracks, takes notes, and uses his judgment of how the recording sessions are progressing. "I've seen him back there - he's got a whole pack of colored pencils," says David. "We rely a lot on his judgment and perception of how we're doing. He's the one who is going to pick which takes are used in production."

I asked whether winning a Grammy for the Arensky CD had crossed his mind (the quartet previously won a Grammy in 2006, and has been nominated several other times), but David remains humble. "In any given year, there are a lot of deserving musicians," says David. "We've been incredibly lucky in terms of those awards. I find myself being surprised every time."

"Ying Quartet Plays Anton Arensky"

Sono Luminus