Does anyone like Schubert's big G major quartet (D887) with the repeats?

[Cato]

The real question is does anyone like Dvořák's big 3rd quartet in D major? I haven't heard it.

How strange - I put it in the CD drawer about an hour ago ready to play later. I'll report back...

God, Fate, The Universe, or whatever you might want to call it, seems to want you to hear that Dvorak quartet today!

Why?  Nobody yet knows, perhaps nobody can know!  But this "coincidence" seems outrageously uncoincidental! 

I will join later with my thoughts on both the Schubert and now the Dvorak.  However, for now...an off-topic anecdote.

Recently I underwent a skin cancer operation on my scalp (not malignant).  A complicated stitching and stretching of the skin were involved to cover the extraction.

A day later I was back in the dermatologist's office for a post-operation check-up and bandage change.  The nurse did her best to press down on every sore spot possible and thereby aggravate every nerve ending possible. 

Aching and feeling halfway angry and sorry for myself, I went down to the main entrance of the building, which has many other offices of various kinds, and immediately caught sight of a poor woman of advanced age with a massively, monstrously disfigured face, either from Proteus syndrome (Elephant-Man Disease) or neurofibromatosis.


I felt quite properly chastised and smacked in the chops by God for complaining about my basically invisible and temporary wound, while that poor woman has suffered decades with something unimaginable!  😇


Was her appearance a coincidence?  Of course, one might expect to see disfigured people by a dermatologist's office, but her disease is fantastically rare (fewer than 300 people with the disease have ever appeared in medical literature).


Too many such coincidences have appeared in my life for me to believe that they were random events without meaning. 😇

And now...back to Schubert and his Quartet!

[DavidW]

Do report back. I don't have a copy of it. But I'm going to listen to the G major Schubert Quartet shortly, as I can't remember what I think of it.

One of the greatest string quartets ever written!  I enjoyed my relisten with Prazak.  They deliver.

My favorite Schubert chamber works remain the string quintet and piano trio #2.

[vers la flamme]

One of the greatest string quartets ever written!  I enjoyed my relisten with Prazak.  They deliver.

My favorite Schubert chamber works remain the string quintet and piano trio #2.

Excellent choices.

[Mandryka]

The Kremer is the most "leaden" I have heard but I recall that I found it fascinating although I'd prefer a faster tempo.

I don't find it leaden at all! But then I am a Kremer fan.

However, my big discovery in this binge of D887 performances, Belcea, makes Kremer sound a bit flat, lacking relief. Maybe there's a way to classify things here - from symphonic storm and stress at one extreme of the spectrum, and sweet and faux-naive lyricism at the other.

[Jo498]

Maybe I was using the attribute incorrectly. I meant some combination of slow, serious, bleak.

(Some people like the Tatrai Qt Schubert quintet (I think from the 1970s, on hungaroton but also some Western labels, it's the same recording, AFAIK) that is also very bleak although it's only slow in the scherzo, I don't think it's very good. The Kremer D 887 works much better.)

Kremer also did the slowest and bleakest Brahms sonatas (but this was probably Afanassiev's influence - he would not have played like that with Argerich) and Mozart string trio (of course not as extreme here but considering the piece also quite serious).

[Mandryka]

Notes from the Tetzlaff Quartet recording

"when I played the piece for the first time, it completely knocked me over, the fact that major and minor can be allowed to crash into each other so violently within the smallest space. Every major is immediately destroyed with a minor chord, and every minor can immediately be transformed into a major chord and as a result perhaps become even more painful or bitterer. "

. . .

"When one creates such a quartet in which nothing is left of the conventions or of this assurance that there are certain limits within which one as an artist or a human being operates, knowing that he then will not go over the edge – when one completely breaks through this, I could imagine that one is so horrified of oneself that one practically has to compose such a conclusion. To say: I've just said all of that, but life of course goes on anyway. Now it's over. And a smile lingers after this struggling: OK, so that's what it means to be human. But an angel might perhaps laugh at it. That is how I imagine it."

[AaronSF]

I love this quartet.  I've been listening to the Quartetto Italino version for the last 40 years, and it suits me fine. 

[Mandryka]

Takacs 2024 - something interesting's going on there. Delicate, introspective. It may join Belcea in the top tier.  It looks like this

[Leo K.]

Takacs 2024 - something interesting's going on there. Delicate, introspective. It may join Belcea in the top tier.  It looks like this

I may have to revisit this as I felt the recorded sound was too far away - perhaps I was wrong, as this is getting high praise wherever I go, haha