'The happiest work in the world', it's been called. 'The ultimate feel-good piece'. 'The only work that nobody doesn't like'. The 'Trout' Quintet, named after the Schubert song that provides the theme for the …
Schubert’s music for the stage is much less well known than his lieder and symphonies. Although he had one of his first public successes with the Singspiel Die Zwillingsbrüder, most of his works for theatre would remain unperformed for a long time a…
Of Schubert’s various string quartets the Quartet in A minor, with its variations on the well-known Rosamunde theme and the Quartet in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’, with variations on the song of that name, are the most familiar. The ‘Arpeggione’ …
“A spacious performance, enthralling and poetic… The Adagio is taken unusually slowly, but without any feeling of the rhythm sagging - the effect is unexpectedly profound and meditative.” --Gramophone Magazine, February 2006 “These artists find a gr…
The novelty of Franz Anton Hoffmeister’s double bass quartets lies in his substitution of that husky-voiced instrument for the first violin in a regular string quartet line-up. Seldom heard in such a prominent position the double bass reveals itself…
This Oehms Classics disc by violist Ashan Pillai, who is British by way of Sri Lanka, might seem to some as an example of left-field programming at its most extreme -- Schubert's beloved Arpeggione Sonata and five viola transcriptions of his fam…