Schubert: String Quartets Nos. 13 & 14
This is a wonderful record. After 34 years together, the Guarneri Quartet's balance, interplay, beauty, and homogeneity of tone are incomparable. The rhythm is flexible, the phrasing elegant, and the transitions and changes of mood and character seem as natural as breathing. The players' expressiveness is warm, noble, and deeply felt; they bring out every emotional nuance of these late great Schubert quartets. Written in the shadow of death, their somberness only deepened by occasional gleams of sunlight, they represent a triumph of inspired creativity over poverty, ill health, and public indifference. No. 13, suffused with a poignant, wistful yearning, cries out in despair and ends in resignation; No. 14 is dark, dramatic, tense, driven. In both, Schubert uses melodies from earlier works: in No. 13 theRosamundetheme, in No. 14 not only the song of the title, but also an echo ofErlkonig.--Edith Eisler