Schubert: String Quintet, D. 956 / String Trio, D. 581

Description

Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)String Quintet in C Major, D. 956String Trio in B Flat Major, D. 581Vienna has always claimed Franz Schubert as peculiarly its own. Others, such as Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, had made their home there, but Schubert was a native of the city. Nevertheless his parents had moved to the capital from other parts of the Empire, his father from Moravia and his mother from Silesia. Schubert's father was a schoolmaster, a profession that it seemed likely his son might in the end follow. As a boy, the fourth of fourteen children of whom only five survived, he was trained as a choir boy of the Imperial Chapel, under Antonio Salieri, and, in consequence, as a pupil of the Staatskonvikt, where he took a leading part in orchestral activities, as he had in family chamber music. His first surviving compositions date from 1810, his second year of study.When his voice broke, at the age of fifteen, Schubert was offered a scholarship for further academic study, but rejected this in the hope of being able to devote his time more fully to music. In 1817 he took the customary short course to qualify him as a primary schoolteacher and the following year joined his father as an assistant in a profession for which he never showed the least aptitude. Already he had proved prolific as a composer, with a particular facility in setting words to music and a gift for apt melody. In the course of his short life, however, he was never to gain full recognition with any official employment. Much of his music was performed at private gatherings, to the delight of his friends, in whose company he took the greatest pleasure, intermittently deserting the classroom for the freedom of lodgings shared with his friend Schober and later with Mayrhofer.Schubert's final years were darkened by illness and the probability of an early death, as a then incurable venereal infection took its toll. In 1828 there was the first public concert devoted to his music, some of which had already been published, while other publishers had begun to show some interest, particularly in more readily marketable products for the gifted amateur. On his doctors' advice he moved to the Vienna suburb of Wieden to stay with his brother Ferdinand, but in spite of intermittent bouts of energy, he became increasingly debilitated and died on the afternoon of 19th November.The B Flat String Trio, D. 581, was written in September, 1817, a year after Schubert's first surviving attempt at the form, an incomplete B flat Trio started in 1816. The form itself, with violin, viola and cello, presents its own particular challenge. Haydn made significant use of it, and Mozart contributed a work in concertante style. Beethoven wrote string trios in both a four-movement form, the structural counterpart of the string quartet and in the six-movement divertimento style, with alternating dance-movements. Schubert takes the first as a model, with an opening movement of transparent texture that fol