Schubert: String Quartet, D87; String Quintet, D956

Advantages: Haunting, passionate music to get lost in.
Disadvantages: It's classical and this puts people off before they even try it.

...interrupt it - particularly something as mundane as housework. Floon and I are obviously not alone in finding the quintet special. This music has aroused the passions of many and the notes say” Many musicians have spoken in awe of its spiritual Elysianism, including the pianist Artur Rubinstein (who requested the slow movement be played at his funeral), the great nineteenth-century cellist Alfredo Piatti (who asked for it to be played during his dying hours to send him into the next world), and the renowned quartet leader John Saunders who had the opening seven bars of the first movement’s second subject inscribed on his tombstone above the following Shakespearian quotation (Sonnet XVIII): So long as man can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. String Quintet in C Major, D956 (1828) The title conveys... Read review

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Advantages: Sublime, soulful songs by Schubert
Disadvantages: Sung in German

...and anxiety. Pounding piano accompaniment symbolises the horse’s hooves. The Composer Franz Peter Schubert was born in Vienna on 31st January 1797 in Vienna. (During a rainy day in Vienna last year, I actually visited the home and birthplace of Schubert). In 1815, Schubert became a schoolmaster. In that year alone, he composed 150 songs including the Earl King. A prolific composer Schubert was at ease writing in many different forms including symphonies, string and piano quartets and of course Lieder. The Performers Ian Bostridge is a Tenor. He did not originally intend to become a singer instead studying philosophy and history at Cambridge University. He made his first public appearance at the Wigmore Hall in London. In 1995, he signed an exclusive record deal with EMI. Julius Drake was born in London. He has accompanied Ian Bostridge... Read review

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Advantages: Music to take you beyond this world
Disadvantages: Needs a bit of patience

...for a harpsichord player called Goldberg to play to his employer, a minor nobleman who suffered from insomnia. You or I might nowadays turn on the radio to help us to sleep; the nobleman sent for Goldberg. Chamber music is just music for a small number of instruments – anything from one to ten or so. The work I want to convince you is worth your while this time is the String Quintet by Schubert. Right – let me guess: your eyes have glazed over and you’re wondering why you even read this far! It’s the label thing again: if I’d called it Franz Meets His Maker you might have been slightly less put off. Just bear with me, OK? ******Franz Schubert…****** Poor Schubert lived a short life: born 1797, snuffed out in 1828 by syphilis, which dominated the last four years of his life. Yet in his thirty-one years he wrote around a thousand works, including... Read review

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