Schubert Quartet Movement
Berlin Staatskapelle String Quartet
Musical Performance Quartet 0During the “years of crisis” between 1818 and 1823, when Schubert was forging new stylistic paths, he made only one attempt at the genre widely considered the pinnacle of chamber music, which he had contributed to extensively before: the restless C-minor Allegro, written in 1820, paints a clear picture of the 23-year-old composer’s struggle for musical innovation. He gave up on the following Andante after 41 measures—he was not to compose his last three great quartets until four years later. The unique gem of the first movement, however, remained and acquired a permanent place in the repertoire—just like the “Unfinished” Symphony of 1822.
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Franz Schubert (1797–1828) String Quartet in C minor D 703 “Quartettsatz” (1820) Allegro assai
Wolfram Brandl, Violin Krzysztof Specjal, Violin Yulia Deyneka, Viola Claudius Popp, Cello |
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Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony in B minor from 1822 is one of the most famous musical torsos of the symphonic repertoire. The Quartettsatz (which is simply German for “quartet movement”) presents a parallel situation in the medium of chamber music. Adding to the mystique of both is the fact that it was not because of the composer’s premature death that these works were left incomplete: rather, Schubert seems to have faced a creative roadblock after completing certain sections (one movement for the quartet, two for the “Unfinished” Symphony). Although he made sketches for how to proceed, he decided to move on to other projects. In fact, the extraordinarily prolific Schubert started and abandoned several other compositions as well (both chamber and symphonic). Yet the Quartettsatz and the “Unfinished” each represent such a level of mastery that even in their incomplete states they offer a compelling musical experience. The former dates from the end of 1820—a year after the beloved “Trout” Quintet—and marks an enormous leap forward from Schubert’s previous string quartets. He had written extensively in the medium as a teenager, but those early works were intended for cozy performances by his immediate family (with the composer taking the viola part). The Quartettsatz seems to have steered Schubert in the direction of his final three masterpieces in the genre. After finishing this movement, Schubert drafted 41 measures of a slow movement in A-flat but then abandoned it altogether.
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He then took another pause from quartet writing for several years—just as he had after the youthful quartets. Yet already in this piece you can hear anticipations of the life-or-death urgency that characterizes the outer movements of the famous “Death and the Maiden” Quartet of 1826. Like so many of Schubert’s compositions, the Quartettsatz remained an unknown gem during the composer’s life (it wasn’t even published until 1870).
Schubert’s choice of C minor for his home key seems to prompt a language of clenched compression—rather as it did for Beethoven. And in this final decade of his life, Schubert became increasingly obsessed with the legacy of the older master. The sense of ambition that is a signature of his final masterworks already fuels the Quartettsatz, with its highly wrought, agitated opening. Even the second theme, which spins out in a lyrical A-flat, is harried by the restless tempo and rhythmic energy of the whole movement. Schubert also twists conventional sonata form into unexpected harmonic directions (with a hint, at one point, of the suspended harmonies from the Andante of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony). One of the movement’s oddest features is the repression of the opening music. It doesn’t even appear in the recapitulation and is not heard again (after the exposition repeat) until the very end, when abrupt chords shutter the piece.
—Thomas May
Notes originally published in the Pierre Boulez Saal program book for the concert of the Boulez Ensemble on September 1, 2020.
Violin
Wolfram Brandl
Krzysztof Specjal
Viola
Yulia Deyneka
Cello
Claudius Popp, Cello
Video Director
Frederic Delesques
Recording
Camera
Anna Motzeln, Joanna Piechenka, Mathias Sifihn, Nicolai Wolff
Colour Grading
Stephane Andrivot
Teldex Studio Berlin
Audio Producer
Friedemann Engelbrecht
Sound Engineers & Audio Post-Production
Julian Schwenkner, Sebastian Nattkemper
Heliox Films
Production Manager
Emmanuelle Faucilhon
Executive Producer
Pierre-Francois Decoufle
A Production of the Pierre Boulez Saal © 2020 Pierre Boulez Saal. All Rights Reserved