Schubert: String Quartets, D87, D804 "Rosamunde", D703 "Quartettsatz"

“Meine Ruh’ ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer, Ich finde sie nimmer und nimmer mehr.”, “My peace is gone, my heart is heavy, I can never find it again.” (From Goethe’s Faust, quoted by Schubert in a letter to the painter Leopold Kupelwieser, 31st March, 1824.)

Schubert’s A minor Quartet, completed the same month as his much-quoted letter to Kupelwieser, is the first of three masterpieces for the medium. Its “Rosamunde” tag is due to Schubert’s inclusion of a theme borrowed from his incidental music to Helmina von Chézy’s play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus. The play was a flop, closing after only two performances, but Schubert showed his affection for the B flat entr’acte by reusing it not only in this string quartet but later in the third of his Op. 142 set of Impromptus.

The Belceas chart the topography of the Rosamunde Quartet in masterly fashion. The outburst of black despair that suddenly surfaces during the Andante is particularly shocking here, while in the work’s first movement, Corina Belcea’s selective employment of vibrato lends the melancholic opening theme a rare poignancy. This is a performance to set beside the excellent Quatuor Mosaïques’ version for Auvidis Astrée. Like the Mosaïques, the Belceas have chosen the early E flat Quartet D 87 as a coupling. Written when the composer was sixteen, it is an uneven work in which the spirits of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven loom large. The Belceas’ deft and witty account is a pleasure to encounter, as is their gripping performance of the C minor Quartettsatz.

The beautifully engineered sound, recorded at Potton Hall in Suffolk, could not be bettered. I very much hope that the Belceas will go on to record the other mature Schubert quartets as well as the String Quintet.