Faust / Schreiber / Tamestit / Queyras / Poltéra

The programme also features two late works by the composer that the music world still holds in deep affection: Schubert wrote his String Quartet in G major after witnessing the premiere of a Beethoven quartet (Op. 130) in 1826. For the first few months after hearing it, he was so impressed by the work of his great idol that he couldn’t bring himself to put pen to paper. Then, in just eleven days, he wrote a string quartet that broke brand new ground for the listening public, with its multiple shifts between major and minor keys, its sharp contrasts, and prevalence of sounds rather than melodies.

Two years later, just a few months before his death, Schubert wrote his Quintet in C major, an entrancing »swan song« that foreshadows the afterlife. Two cellos provide a dark tonal palette, while the slow, mysterious passages render all sense of time void, and even the fast movements fluctuate between an energy filled with forward motion and an introspective cessation. Both works were only published and premiered a few years after Schubert’s early death – yet in spite of this, the musical language they speak had lost none of its radicalism.