Repertoire: Schubert's String Quintet in C Major--A Personal Selection 

your channel is one of the best things of 2020

Your presentations are part of my daily schedule because of their educational value and entertainment. I hope to hear them for many years to come and have the deepest respect for your erudition and love of music.

My personal favorite is the Amadeus Quartet with Pleeth- for the following reason . As a young (17) student at Juilliard I was in a horrible funk and seriously wondering if life was worth living, when I turned on the radio and heard THIS - OMG. THAT Orpheus recording sounds terrific

touching words, good to see you back on familiar ground! your talks are also therapeutic in these bizar times!

Casals, Stern, Katims, Tortelier, Schneider has been a long time favourite of mine, they leave out some of the repeats, the atmospehere is incredible, Stern at top level, a very moving performance indeed...

The recording by the Ébène Quartet and Capucon is wonderful.

I'm so glad to see the Alban Berg Quartett on the list. They're my favourite. If I could also suggest a dark-horse performance, it would be the live performance with Heifetz and Piatigorsky. So much energy and virtuosic flair, it's just a joy to listen to.

Those were very kind words, and I wish you good health and good luck. And it is us, your 'fans', who have to thank you for all the inspiration and new ideas you bring to us. Please keep up the good work. Music and culture in general are important for people, especially in these turbulent times.

Dave- this is a great video!!! so much love, thank you - real love and Honesty! I couldn't imagine life without sweet Franz Schubert ❤❤❤

We're the ones that are indebted to you for all these videos and the enthusiasm you put on them. When I began exploring Internet, ClassicsToday was the first classical music website I visited and from which I assembled my collection throughout the years.

Good to see the tam tam again. Thank you for being here, David. It’s good to have you on RU-vid talking about great performances of great music.

Have the Emersons with Rostropovich and have always loved it because it really takes such a scorching, furious approach to the finale. Bought the Takacs based on this vid and like that as well for its spaciousness and more gentle lyricism. This is a piece that I think the more you own the better! Next it's onto the Alban Berg for what's sounds like a leaner, more economical, pared down approach.

Your channel has helped me maintain what sanity I have left in this trying year. Thanks for sharing them with us!

We're grateful to you too David.

Please take care of your health, you singular, precious, knowledgeable, contributive fellow -- who brings so many of us joy! 🎶

I've mentioned it before, but I have been reading you, Jed, and Robert's recommendations for years; my collection has been shaped and informed by years of articles from the staff at CT. Good health and best wishes to you, along with much gratitude for years of discussion and insight. These talks are wonderful. I look forward to many more.

If you allow me, just a personal note: your video talks have been kind of therapeutic also. I too was confined during the last months, dealing with fear of this pandemic (to which I am quite susceptible, being a disabled guy who has to get his hands everywhere to move or to stand) and with my late father's death in April, in the midst of it all. Since March I spent four or five months at a relative's place, where music is not a part of daily life. Your videos were a very engaging way of maintaining my enthusiasm and my attention on music matters and on the things I love the most. Guess we're all nerdy lucky bastards with so much beautiful music to share. Cheers!

I grew up listening to the Casals, Tortelier, Stern, Katims, Schneider performance. But I look forward to exploring some newer versions,. It is such a great, great piece of music. Thanks for the video will check out Alban Berg and Takacs etc.

Mr H good to see back where you belong - in front of the tam-tam! Thanks for all you do.

Enjoy your videos a lot, thanks, you're a treasure in my book..

Just listened to his personal favorite and I agree. It reminds me of the scene in that movie about the Wansee Conference when Eichmann (may he burn in hell) puts it on the adagio. He asks the butler, "Does it tear your heart out?" The butler slowly stops working as I presume he feels the same chills I do when he listens to the opening of the piece and answers, "Beautiful, sir." To which Eichmann responds, "I have never understood the passion for Schubert's sentimental Viennese shit." It was funny since we watched the movie in high-school and when the piece came on I cried 😅

You’re a treasure David, thank you!!

I'm beyond grateful for your channel.

You’re the top, as Cole Porter would put it ❤️ Btw, the ‘stasis vs song’ distribution of versions is most instructive!! Many thanks 🙏

So glad to see you safe back home and feeling well (I'm sure Pipo will agree with me:)) Great review of a true masterpiece. For me the one i Io back to listen to again and again is also on Hyperion by the Raphael ensemble which also recorded a great version of the Mendelssohn string quintets. Thank for those wonderful videos which keep enriching our lives and musical knowledge. Take care and keep on listening! :)

I love the version by the almost unknown Vellinger Quartet with Bernard Greenhouse on second cello. It was given away free as a CD ROM in 1998 with the BBC Music Magazine. Well worth listening to if you can track it down.

I just love these videos. Always enjoyable and enlightening, even funny sometimes, and I appreciate your vast knowledge, opinions and enthusiasm about the music you discuss. Especially this one, as the Schubert quintet has been a favorite of mine since I first heard it just about 25 years ago with Yo-Yo Ma's recording with the Cleveland Quartet. It was hard for me to imagine a more beautiful rendition, but the Orpheus version is fabulous too. I also like to have hard copies but the cost of the CD made me flinch! Yikes!

I was gonna get all mushy but will instead just say you keep hittin' it out of the park with this unique content -- found nowhere else on RU-vid.

Hello Dave, this is a bit out of your "field" since I am talking about live recording. You seem to love this great piece of music , so I want to point out one - not recorded, but available on You Tube - which you may love as well. It is played by Quartetto di Cremona with Eckart Runge. I can assure you that it is worth watching. I recorded it on DVD and now it is my favorite recording of this masterpiece. Please, try it !!!!!

Dear David, I have just bought in the Apple store the Borodin Quartet's version for less than a dollar. I am listening to it and I am enjoying it, the adagio is very beautifully played (to my ears, of course). I wish you all the best, your video from the hospital touched me very much. Greetings from São Paulo, Brazil.

I'm sure Pipo is as glad as we are to see you back in your proper surroundings, though I doubt she'll let on. I enjoyed your commentary on the quintet, despite its having been interrupted five times (or maybe more - I lost count) by the same ad. Rummaging once again through the neglected LP's on my overly full shelves, I found just one recording of this work, the DG version from the late 70's with Rostropovich joining the Melos ensemble; I see that the most recent CD reissue of this got a 10/10 rating from your colleague Jed Distler. It appears to be of the rapt and expansive persuasion - the timing for the adagio is 16'03". I'm looking forward to reacqainting myself with it. Stay well - we're counting on you to help get us through this troubled period.

I just recently found your channel and have enjoyed it immensely. The Schubert quintet is one of my favorite compositions, and I have had and listened to numerous versions. It was amazing to find that your "go to" version by the Orpheus Quartet is also the one that I have always enjoyed the most!

Dave, I really enjoyed this Schubert review, and the Quintet in C Major is certainly one of the immortal classics. In the spirit of your excellent "Transcriptions for Strings" talk, may I share with your readers the deep and moving rendition of the Quintet transcribed for string orchestra and recorded by Dalia Atlas and the Atlas Camerata, now on Carriere Classics CD. Maestro Atlas is now going on 88, and she has given us a really profound spiritual experience in her recording of the Quintet played by a string orchestra. And Dave, I hope you had a healthy and wonderful 60th birthday - your sharings are an invaluable inspiration and gift, especially in these times.

I’m learning so much from you! Thank you...

I watch daily - thanks for making my life richer with your humor and erudite-ness.

A recording that surprised me was the Weller Quartet....wonderfully recorded. They brought out details I seldom here.

Caro Maestro, watching your programs has become a good compulsion of mine. Thanks for sharing your entertaining and insightful considerations. They really spark curiosity and broaden view. Saluti from Stockholm (Sweden) Roberto

I cannot believe I have not seen your channel until a couple of weeks ago. I love it!! I have 4 recordings of this. I judge them by how slow they take the second movement. haha.

Great to see you back in the bat cave David! I came later in life to schubert, now he is one of my favorites. There is a atmosohere in some of his best chamber works of,, an almost Addams family Gothic weirdness. I know weird description. But I find it in the trio of the scherzo, where we go from summer in the hunt, to a feeling of cold winter in the trio. On a personal note, my boss comes from New York city, and I chuckle because you share many of his vocal mannerisms, especially when you say HOWEVER! Stay well. Paul G.

I cannot help this, but the recorded performance by the Konzerthaus Quartett remains my favourite over all the long years. The Viennese tang is irresistible. in a way and to an extent that no other recording that I have heard produces.

Dave, greetings from the Penal Colonies. It is never a good thing to be in a hospital - either as a guest or patient - so I am glad that you are out. Whether one agrees with your good self or not, your channel has alleviated the gloom of 2020 so thank you. My favourite Schubert Quintet is the Borodin Quartet from the 90s on Teldec. I once loved the Weller Quartet but came to realise that they were a tad too sweet in this domain. Best wishes, B

Skimming through my collection, found the String Quintet in C Major, D. 956 with the Ensemble Villa Musica, on Naxos--will have to see if it measures up. Can't remember when I last listened to it.

A truly wonderful work and music I could not live without. My very favorite recording and the one I usually listen to is by Quatuor Ebene and Gautier Capucon on Erato. It’s absolutely gorgeous and takes the repeats-and the slow movement is 15+ minutes! I also like the Artemis Quartet with Truls Mork on Virgin and the Sony CD with Stern, Lin, Laredo, Ma, and Robinson. The slow movement on these recordings is around 13 minutes, but I prefer the slower tempo of the Ebene/Capucon. I used to have the Alban Berg, but always found it too bleak and really missed the repeats.

This one was exciting for me because I adore this piece--and know none of the recordings David recommended! Looking forward to listening anew.

I used to whistle classical tunes as I walked at Rice University--not as an academic or student--just to see if there would be a response. The only time someone engaged me in conversation as a result was as I whistled the second theme of the opening movement.

Interesting that the Orpheus recording uses so little vibrato. Certainly lovely. I learned it from the Guarneri and I love hearing new and different ones. Such a magnificent work.

I’ve really liked Takacs Quartet recordings that I’ve heard. I remember a Beethoven album of theirs, as well as a Bruckner quintet (?) that’s very striking, extremely chromatic.

My 2 favourite versions are the Orpheus and, more recently, the Quatour Ébène. I find these both amazing!

Great to see you back in front of the tam-tam. This is a very fine quintet and I don’t think I’ve heard a bad recording. I’ve seen some excellent student performances live as well.

I think that Pipo isn't looking for his mouse-toy but for the..TROUT quintet..since you are talking about Schubert's chamber music!!😊 Thank you very-very much for your wonderful videos. They made me listen to music with enthusiasm again! Many wishes for great health!

Stern/Casals et al are the top in my book. (Hollywood also very fine). Look forward to checking out some of the others.

The first version I heard - I admit that the reason was the disc was affordable - was the one with the Tátrai Quartet with László Szilvásy on Hungaroton. I still have an attachment to that version, even to the album cover that depicts a painting by C.D. Friedrich of a lonely man seeing the clouds from above. Surely, L'Archibudelli applies as a "HIP" group, but I have a fondness for almost everything that Anner Bylsma did on record, and I can detect in their version a (bold?, discreet?) use of vibrato, but I know the sound of gut strings without the support of some wires is an acquired taste. By the way, it seems that Wispelwey is a "gut strings guy" when performing 18th and 19th Centuries repertoire.

I've just watched this, and since this piece is at the top of my favorites' list, I was even more interested in seeing it that I otherwise would be. I know that many musicians specify that the slow movement be played at their memorial services, and I can see why. (The guy who got me started in radio and became a lifelong friend passed a couple of years ago, and at HIS memorial somebody decided that the right piece was the Meditation from "Thais"! I wish they'd asked me. Maybe it would have been too much trouble to recruit 5 string players, but the Schubert would absolutely have been my choice.) I remember introducing it on the air once by quoting Shakespeare: "This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong/To love that well, which thou must leave ere long."

My favorite (recorded) version heard so far is the one with the Emerson String Quartet did with Rostropovich.

Excellent selection, even if it doesn't contain my favorites and I found your favorite a bit colder than I would expect. But what the hell do I know? Anyway, my preferred ones are the Melos Quartet with Rostropovich as second cellist, and my favorite is the Amadeus with William Pleeth. Both show great primarius work, especially in Brainin's case. I don't mind the romanticizing tone or the glissandi (I love them, as a matter of fact) because the piece is pure drama, and any effort to sober it up is misplaced in my opinion. Those heartbreaking chords in the second movement, after the Agitato second theme, can't be played better. Yes, I heard the not very clean notes too but when you're in the middle of a hurricane you don't yell with your diaphragm but with your bloody guts. (If you find this comment too long, please don't hesitate in deleting it. I know my English is not perfect by any standard and I will understand.) By the way, my nephew Wilbur (eight years old and no talent for music whatsoever) improvised a prelude that came very close to the quality of our admired Heraclius Djabadary's, only with more interesting harmonic progressions. After that, he quit and decided to play football instead. If you're still awake, I would like to ask you to share with us your opinion about the best version of Verdi's quartet. (Say Amadeus, please. I know the Quartetto Italiano and stuff, but I love Norbert's take of the bel canto style.) Thank you so much for your great work and keep in good health.

Thanks for posting your videos. I've returned to classical music after almost a decade and have found your videos informative and entertaining. It's prompted me to subscribe to Classics Today. With all your recommendations, it has been a delight for my ears, but a detriment to my wallet as I've been buying up many of your recommendations. Because of your recommendations, I've been stocking my CD library with reference recordings from the 60s to the 90s. With the back catalog full of reference recordings, are you concerned that there are current talented artists and ensembles without recording contracts or broadcast outlets that will be lost to musical history?

Thank you! This is such a remarkable piece of music, especially when you consider the context of the other works Schubert produced during the same period. I find that the version I prefer depends on my mood at the time. I do like the Hollywood String Quartet recording a great deal, especially when I play it in the car, where I can't expect the best sound! I grew up with an old Casals Festival recording, which still has wonderful moments for me. Which leads me to ask whether at some point you would consider comparing Solomon and Gieseking. The sound is not the best, and there are certainly more recent pianists who capture the music better,...but there are times when I find their touch marvelous. I realize that you do not believe that the best lies in the past, about which I have, as the last surviving Habsburg Jew, mixed feelings, and you have pretty much convinced me to give up all my acoustic recordings. I also wonder whether the recording techniques that brought us Solomon and Gieseking gave their playing a kind of (artificial?) patina that gives a certain something to works like the slower Brahms 116-118 pieces. I apologize for going on at such length!

David -- another reason to prefer downloaded music is more and more recordings are becoming available in formats like FLAC-24 with higher sampling rates and more bits/sample than CDs. The quality is audibly better. I grew up with Schubert Quintet performance from the Casals Festival at Prades -- Stern, Schneider, Katims, Torlelier and Casals. I still love it.

My first experience of this piece was on the mid-'70s LP from the Juilliard with Bernard Greenhouse. That, plus the Juilliard's Debussy/Ravel quartets, were my two favorite chamber-music recordings in my youth. Unfortunately, when the CD era rolled around, Columbia decided to re-record both albums so they could plaster a "Digital Recording" label on the discs…and, sadly, the remakes lost the magic of the earlier versions, which still aren’t available on CD. My current favorites are The Lindsays (for the "stasis" version) and a pick-up ensemble of musicians led by Anner Blysma playing on the Smithsonian Collection instruments (for the "songful" version). Interestingly, the latter, although a "period instruments" version, definitely use about as much vibrato as modern-instrument renditions. But there are many others that are worth a listen, from the Hollywood on down. (Still haven’t heard the Orpheus; I'm guessing it's on Tidal.)

4:32 I think Pepo was protesting the opinion that your opinions are right. Pepo was meaning to say the her opinions are the most important and right!

Because, as you say, there are a zillion commendable recordings of most every work in the "standard" repertory - even after eliminating eccentric interpretations, extraneous duplications and sentimental, "first time I heard it" versions - I find that my preferences hinge more and more on technical-recording factors and to "schools" of instrumental playing style. I prefer the French style of string playing, with its relatively lean and subtle-vibrato sound, to the fatter-sounding Russian style and its steroidal American variant. I despair of the hard, glassy tone of a lot of digital-era piano recordings, which I know from experience many of the victimized pianists don't produce in live performances. There's also the space in which a recording is made, as important an "instrument" as any that musicians lay hands or lips on - to appreciate the difference room acoustics can make, listen to one of the works conducted by Mariss Jansons in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam vs. the same piece recorded in the Herkulessaal in Munich. Those factors narrow the field of choices for me, sometimes limiting access to fine performers, but rarely if ever to fine performances, of standard rep. With more esoteric music, of course, you may be stuck with the Sudwest-Gesundfunk Orchestra or third-place finisher in the 1974 Queen Edmonia Competition, sight-reading and recorded in what sounds like a big cardboard box, and hope for a better future alternative.

Thanks for another interesting video! My favorite recording of the quintet is one you probably heard and forgot years ago: the Brandis Quartet on Nimbus and later Brilliant. I did not like their take on the late quartets, as they seemed to handle the music too roughly, but in the quintet that roughness somehow translates as strong passion. Maybe the guest cellist caused this transformation; I have noticed that the character of chamber groups can change markedly with the addition of a single extra voice. Anyway, I think it's worth seeking out if you have the time. I assume we will at some point get a video on the late Schubert quartets from you. For the earlier quartets, I found that the Quatuor Sine Nomine were the best advocates overall. They also did an excellent Rosamunde. For the Quartetsatz, it's gotta be the Italianos!

Hi, David! I like your talks. They are fun and very helpful. How about one on Winterreise? Looking forward to it.

Well said, and thank you. For some reason the Schubert string quintet is a work I have never listened to. I wonder why? I have recordings of it on my shelf. I am a big fan of Schubert's octet, which is even bigger, so it isn't the length of this work that has kept me away. You haven't done a Brahms requiem video yet, or maybe I missed it? The reason I ask is because I have been listening to a recording of it this week that I found equal parts extraordinary and frustrating. Along with a Nanie that simply needs to be heard to be believed. I have no doubt that you have these recordings on your shelf somewhere, but I will not disclose which recording it is until an appropriate time. The dent on your Alban Berg box makes another appearance!

As always, thank you, Dave, for the absolutely great recommendations. Every one I've picked up has been a disc I will enjoy for a very long time. Between your videos & books, you're keeping me (and my PayPal account) VERY busy! Question: Any thoughts or recommendations for his Octet?

My favorite version is Ensemble Villa Musica on Naxos. What's your opinion on that reading?

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Your comments about digital downloads intrigues me. I've wondered if CD music listening is becoming less popular, but as I watch your chats, you continue to come out with armloads of compact discs. What are people getting? What's on RU-vid are just MP3 files right? Otherwise, does one subscribe to a music service and download to a computer? Stream? I made the transition from LP ---> compact disc and would be loath to do that the second time.

@David Hurwitz - Thanks for the video - btw - stay healthy! - want to ask - what is your take on the version by the Emerson String Quartet + Rostropovich?

This was fantastic. Thank you for reviewing this particular piece. Any particular thoughts on the Yo-Yo Ma/Clevelant Qt recording? Hoping a Brahms clarinet quintet review is soon to come...

What's your opinion on the Emerson Quartet + Rostropovich rendition?