String Quintet in C major, D. 956: II. Adagio
Franz Schubert
Recording
Takács Quartet, Ralph Kirshbaum (cello)
- Album
- Schubert: String Quintet & String Quartet D956 & 703
- Year
- 2012
- Length
- Period
- Romantic
- Listen
Painting
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
Prater Landscape, c. 1831
The piece
Schubert finished the Quintet in 1828, weeks before he died at 31, adding a second cello to the string quartet. In the Adagio the three middle instruments hold a slow, hymn-like line while the first violin and a pizzicato cello answer around it. A stormy F minor section breaks in before the opening music returns.
The recording
The Takács Quartet with Ralph Kirshbaum, on modern instruments; a Sunday Times CD of the Week in 2012. BBC Music Magazine wrote that “everything … seems to happen at exactly the right time.”
Other recordings
The 1952 Prades recording with Isaac Stern and Pablo Casals (Sony), and the Emerson Quartet with Mstislav Rostropovich (DG).