It's probably a bit soon for a greatest-hits disc by the young Utah crossover group the 5 Browns, which may be why the more generic "favorites" was used in the subtitle here. Nevertheless, this sampling of the group's three discs so far serves as a decent introduction to this rather unusual piano quintet: one with five pianos and five young pianists. You can make all the Osmonds jokes you want, but the fact is that Desirae, Deondra, Gregory, Melody, and Ryan Brown, born between 1979 and 1986 and all students at the Juilliard School, have both the chops and the drive to pull off something really unusual in an intelligent way. The sequence of pieces gives an idea of what happens on the individual albums. The music mostly consists of arrangements, from various pens, of classical standards. The Browns don't play on five pianos all the way through, but break down into smaller groups and solos, reuniting for ceiling-rattling ensembles on the likes of a variation from Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (track 13), which is quite a thrill. The group's 2007 album Browns in Blue features a move in the direction of jazz, which may or may not be a good thing; it is likely to be mostly classical pieces that will stand up to the five-piano concept. But the strength of this group is that the individual players can hold their own. Hear Gregory Brown's rendering of Art Tatum's fearsome Aunt Hagar's Blues, or of the bonus track, Aaron Jay Kernis' Superstar Etude, a work perfectly suited to the youthful enthusiasm of these musicians, with a concluding surprise that it would be a shame to elucidate here. If this quintet takes the trouble to cart five pianos to your town, go and see 'em. If not, this collection is the next-best thing.
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