String Quintet, D. 956

1. 0:00
   Opening melody, inner voices

   The second violin, viola and first cello play a slow melody in E major. Around them, the first violin plays short, dotted phrases and the second cello plucks the bass.

2. 1:00
   Letter to Probst, 2 October 1828

   On 2 October 1828 Schubert, then thirty-one, wrote to the Leipzig publisher Heinrich Albert Probst offering three piano sonatas, Heine songs and a new quintet. The quintet was about to be tried out. The letter is Schubert’s only mention of the work.

3. 2:30
   Jonathan Blumhofer on the Adagio, 2024

   The composer Jonathan Blumhofer found this Adagio closely related to the slow movement of Schubert’s B♭ major piano sonata. He wrote that its nocturnal mood foreshadows later movements by Mahler and Bartók.

4. 4:30
   Middle section in F minor

   The music moves to F minor, a semitone above E, fortissimo. The second cello changes to the bow, and the first violin and first cello play a long melody together. The inner parts accompany them with off-beat chords.

5. 5:20
   Violin and cello in octaves

   The first violin and first cello play the melody in octaves, set wide apart. Beneath them the second cello plays an accompaniment, so the two cellos have different parts.

6. 6:12
   First performance, Vienna, 1850

   The first known public performance took place in Vienna on 17 November 1850, twenty-two years after Schubert’s death. The work was published in 1853. Schubert’s manuscript is lost, and the print is the only source.

7. 7:10
   Brahms’s F minor string quintet, 1862

   In autumn 1862 Brahms sent Clara Schumann the first three movements of an F minor quintet for two violins, viola and two cellos, the ensemble Schubert used. He later destroyed it and recast the music for two pianos, then for piano quintet. The middle section of this Adagio is in F minor.

8. 7:58
   Return of E major

   E major returns. The three inner players take up their broad melody again, while the second cello now plays running demisemiquavers and exchanges flourishes with the first violin.

9. 9:00
   Casals at Prades

   Pablo Casals made the small French town of Prades his home. Its first festival, in 1950, was devoted to Bach. The 1952 festival, recorded by Columbia and heard here, was the first given entirely to chamber music.

10. 10:10
    Percy Scholes on chamber music

    In The Oxford Companion to Music, Percy Scholes found “an intimacy” in the best chamber music “that comes from the impression of a conversation amongst the participants”. His poetic definition of it was “The Music of Friends”. The Columbia sleeve for this recording quoted him.

11. 11:20
    Tully Potter in The Strad

    Reviewing this recording in The Strad, Tully Potter called Tortelier’s pizzicatos in the Adagio “superb”. He wrote that “groans from Casals” “only increase the tension”, and he heard “tremendous thrust” in the central section.

12. 12:28
    F minor in the final bars

    The last three bars turn briefly to F minor, the key of the middle section, before closing in E major.

Joins

1. 4:30
   E major to F minor, fortissimo

   E major breaks off and the music moves to F minor, fortissimo. The second cello changes from plucked bass to bowed motion. The first violin and first cello play the long melody in octaves, with syncopated chords between them.

2. 7:58
   Separated chords return to E major

   The F minor passage ends in quiet, separated chords. These lead back to E major and the sustained inner melody. The first violin and second cello now exchange quick flourishes around the other three players.

3. 12:28
   The F minor chord returns

   In the last three bars, F minor again briefly interrupts E major. The five strings return to the home key at once and close softly.