• Tracks

Schubert: String Quartet D 703, String Quintet D 956 / Truls Mork, Artemis Quartet, Composer: Franz Schubert, Performer: Natalia Prischepenko, Eckart Runge, Gregor Sigl, Friedemann Weigle, Orchestra/Ensemble: Artemis String Quartet Number of Discs: 1 The C-Major String Quintet is Schubert's last and without a doubt greatest chamber work for strings only. And as with many of his late works, whole pages of it reek of death and in the end, like Elektra in her mounting frenzy, dance themselves to their ecstatic and triumphant destruction. Schubert darkens his score with a second cello added to the standard string quartet complement, substituting it for the second viola Mozart chose for his string quintets. One has only to listen to the serpentine second theme in the first movement as it winds around itself, seducing the ear into it's deadly embrace.