Schubert's String Quintet D.956

1827 and 1828 were extraordinary years in Europe, and especially in Vienna. Beethoven died in 1827, leaving behind his last string quartets. Schubert died in 1828, leaving behind the recently finished song cycle die Winterreise D.911, the B flat piano sonata D.960, and the string quintet D.956. There are few more personal works in the whole of music, than these. Maybe Tchaikovsky's Pathétique symphony falls into the same highly personal category. Beethoven died at the age of 57, Schubert at the age of 32. If either had lived an extra 20 years, what would he have composed?

Schubert was born just one year before Mozart died; he died just one year after Beethoven's death. His music is eternal and will last for ever. If ever a piece of music speaks of what the Germans term, after Wagner's die Walküre: Todesverkündung (announcement of death), it is Schubert's string quintet, its two cellos giving added gravitas and a sombre ambiance. Listening to this, or to Beethoven's C sharp minor Op 131 or B flat string quartets Op 130 (with the Große Fuge for the latter) a Martian might conclude that Western music never again achieved such peaks and that the 100 years 1728-1828 with Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert saw music's high tide. Martians often have a point.

I listened to Schubert's string quintet recorded during the 1960s by an ensemble led by Arthur Grumiaux (who else, in Schubert's music?) It has become a bit of a cliché that so many people have nominated this quintet as “music to die to” (especially the second movement that alternates resignation with frustrated anger). Schubert knew he was going to die soon, but he also knew that even greater music resided within him; what it was, we can only guess, alas for us. Grumiaux's name is almost a guarantee of success, in Schubert, at any rate. I grew up with the recording by Casals, Tortelier, Stern, Schneider and Katims; an all-star event, but a long way from Vienna in 1828. Many people have recorded the work, including the Hollywood Quartet, and a group led by Jascha Heifetz. But if you want Schubert, the whole Schubert and nothing but Schubert: Grumiaux's ensemble is high among best bets, right down to that final ominous chord at the end of the work that Schubert never heard before he died.