Product Review

The matchless Takacs Quartet return to Schubert. Their first disc on Hyperion - his Death and the Maiden and Rosamunde quartets - received unprecedentedly lavish critical acclaim, acknowledging a new modern benchmark for these works. Now they turn to perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful of all Schubert's chamber works, the String Quintet - completed six weeks before the composer's death. Schubert included a second cello in the texture, creating a sumptuously warm sound, a cradling intimacy. Here the Takacs players are joined by cellist Ralph Kirshbaum. Also recorded here is the Quartettsatz: a fragment - of the highest quality - of a quartet in C minor abandoned by the composer.