Schubert String Quintet in C Major

Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major: Sublime and Valedictory

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Franz Schubert completed the String Quintet in C Major in the late summer of 1828, less than two months before his death at the age of 31. Sublime and valedictory, it is music which inhabits mysterious and celestial spaces. It achieves the “heavenly lengths” (Robert Schumann’s words) of Schubert’s “Great” Symphony No. 9 in C Major, which was finished two years earlier. We get a sense of the monumental expanse of Bruckner …

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Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major: The Alban Berg Quartet and Heinrich Schiff

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On Monday we listened to a brief sample of recordings by the late cellist Heinrich Schiff. In today’s post, I want to include one more: a soulful 1983 recording of Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major in which Schiff joins the Alban Berg Quartet. The album is listed, deservedly, among EMI’s “Great Recordings of the Century.” This piece was written in 1828, in the final two months of Schubert’s life, and only received …

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