Schubert. 'Death and the Maiden'. String Quartet No.14 in d minor. D 810.

[pastoralguy]

I've recently developed a real obsession for this work recently and have been playing it over and over again in the same manner I did as a teenager when I was discovering masterpieces for the first time. (Oh, to be able to hear all these works for the first time!)

I was going through a pile of CDs recently and chanced upon the Takács Quartet's recording on Hyperion and put it on. Since then, I've dug around and found all my recordings of this work. This was enhanced this afternoon when I popped into a BHF charity shop and fund the Lindsay's ASV disc for 99p!

It's very different to the Takács' disc but no less compelling.

Please could other forum members share their experiences with me?

Thanks,

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many thanks for the pointer towards the Takacs' recording, pasto - about six months ago, I started an "Our Summer BaL" on the late Schubert S4tets, because, although I had many fine recordings of them, none of them quite "matched" my memories of the experience of hearing the works in concert. I know that this is generally true of all recordings of works of this sort of quality, but it doesn't seem to be such an issue for me in recordings of (for example) the Beethoven late 4tets.

Although not specifically about the Death & the Maiden, here is that Thread, in the hope it might be helpful to your new one:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?15718-Our-Summer-BaL-Number-53-Schubert-s-Last-String-Quartets

[pastoralguy]

Many thanks, ferney. Time to resurrect it...

[gurnemanz]

This quartet has been special for me as well. It was (I think) the first string quartet recording I bought - an Decca Ace of Diamonds LP with the Vienna Phil Quartet which I still have. It's dated 1963 but I must have bought it a couple of years after that when I would have been about 17. I think I came to it because I had got to know the song and must have played it a lot at a time when I didn't own that many recordings. I see it's available. ( I might even get it for old times' sake).

[cloughie]

This quartet has been special for me as well. It was (I think) the first string quartet recording I bought - an Decca Ace of Diamonds LP with the Vienna Phil Quartet which I still have. It's dated 1963 but I must have bought it a couple of years after that when I would have been about 17. I think I came to it because I had got to know the song and must have played it a lot at a time when I didn't own that many recordings. I see it's available. ( I might even get it for old times' sake).

That was the recording from which I grew to love the work and first got me interested in listening to SQs. An early CD purchase was the Decca coupling with the Curzon Trout Quintet. Death and the Maiden is probably only surpassed in mindblowing beauty by the String Quintet. Both works dampen the eyes!

[richardfinegold]

That was the recording from which I grew to love the work and first got me interested in listening to SQs. An early CD purchase was the Decca coupling with the Curzon Trout Quintet. Death and the Maiden is probably only surpassed in mindblowing beauty by the String Quintet. Both works dampen the eyes!

Well put. Schubert's masterpieces fully engage the emotions and the intellect.
Beethoven and Schubert did so much to advance the SQ that it is a bit curious that imo, about 3 generations had to pass before another Composer wrote a Quartet that engages one like the finest Symphonies. Mendelssohn, Schumann, and even Brahms wrote well crafted pieces but none compare with the best of their Symphonic outputs. Only Dvorak really excelled at Quartets, until we get to the great Quartets of the 20th Century.

[jayne lee wilson]

Well put. Schubert's masterpieces fully engage the emotions and the intellect.
Beethoven and Schubert did so much to advance the SQ that it is a bit curious that imo, about 3 generations had to pass before another Composer wrote a Quartet that engages one like the finest Symphonies. Mendelssohn, Schumann, and even Brahms wrote well crafted pieces but none compare with the best of their Symphonic outputs. Only Dvorak really excelled at Quartets, until we get to the great Quartets of the 20th Century.

Mendelssohn's Op.80 Quartet is for me at least as great as any of his symphonies (which I love and rate more highly than many). An intense tragic masterpiece, one of the greatest of String Quartets and not just from the 19th Century....

His first two, Op. 13 and Op.12, are equally astonishing: melodically inspired, intense and concise, all the more impressive for facing the challenge and the influence of Beethoven's Late Quartets head-on, using features from them, such as integrated, recurrent slow introductions and recitative, with great originality and motivic, cyclical unity. All in his own so-lovely voice, and already with those characteristic, feather-light, midsummer-night, fantastical scherzi.
They tend toward a classical compression where Beethoven Op. 127 - Op. 135 tend to dance-suite-like diversity and structural expansion.

Opus 13 was completed in 1827, just a few months after Beethoven's death; Opus 80 was written in 1847 as a requiem - a cry of pain - for his sister Fanny, just a few months before his own.

I got to know the early, closely-related pair of Mendelssohn masterworks through Hans Keller's Radio 3 talks about them in the 1970s; they've been with me, somewhere in the back of my mind, ever since. I think they are at least as great as any of Schubert's totally different, again very expansive, chamber creations - which latter often sound like the symphonic apotheosis of song.

Schumann seems to have needed a piano to be truly inspired: his best chamber works are the often darkly intense Trios and Violin Sonatas; then the sunnier inspirations of his Piano Quartet and Quintet.

[EdgeleyRob]

Mendelssohn's Op.80 Quartet is for me at least as great as any of his symphonies (which I love and rate more highly than many). An intense tragic masterpiece, one of the greatest of String Quartets and not just from the 19th Century....

His first two, Op. 13 and Op.12, are equally astonishing: melodically inspired, intense and concise, all the more impressive for facing the challenge and the influence of Beethoven's Late Quartets head-on, using features from them, such as integrated, recurrent slow introductions and recitative, with great originality and motivic, cyclical unity. All in his own so-lovely voice, and already with those characteristic, feather-light, midsummer-night, fantastical scherzi.
They tend toward a classical compression where Beethoven Op. 127 - Op. 135 tend to dance-suite-like diversity and structural expansion.

Opus 13 was completed in 1827, just a few months after Beethoven's death; Opus 80 was written in 1847 as a requiem - a cry of pain - for his sister Fanny, just a few months before his own.

I got to know the early, closely-related pair of Mendelssohn masterworks through Hans Keller's Radio 3 talks about them in the 1970s; they've been with me, somewhere in the back of my mind, ever since. I think they are at least as great as any of Schubert's totally different, again very expansive, chamber creations - which latter often sound like the symphonic apotheosis of song.

Schumann seems to have needed a piano to be truly inspired: his best chamber works are the often darkly intense Trios and Violin Sonatas; then the sunnier inspirations of his Piano Quartet and Quintet.

I posted a while back that I think Op 80 is up there with any late LvB,then expected pelters which never came,so perhaps it's not so outrageous a thing to say.
I'm not brave enough to say Mendelssohn's Symphonies are as good as any,oops I just did.

[teamsaint]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=otdayisyIiM

Well worth a watch and listen.

Albern Berg Quartet.

[Barbirollians]

That was the recording from which I grew to love the work and first got me interested in listening to SQs. An early CD purchase was the Decca coupling with the Curzon Trout Quintet. Death and the Maiden is probably only surpassed in mindblowing beauty by the String Quintet. Both works dampen the eyes!

A fabulous record - I have acquired quite a few other performances of it on record over the years but none match this for me .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=otdayisyIiM
Well worth a watch and listen.
Albern Berg Quartet.

You got your performers Blurred, ts?

[BBMmk2]

I must revisit this timeless masterpiece that it is. One of the most unrelenting works of Schubert, that has to be heard more often. At the moment I am going through a Janacek and Martinu phase!