Can there ever be
too many recordings of Franz Schubert’s most felicitous work, the “Trout” Quintet? Not when they are as exuberant,
as intoxicating, as joyful as the one presented here by pianist Frank Braley,
violinist Renard Capucon, violist Gerard Causse, cellist Gautier Capucon, and
double-bassist Alois Posch.
Schubert wrote this
little gem while vacationing in the town of Steyr in the north of Austria, a
town he loved. But he apparently only wrote it for his own and his friends’
amusement because he never published it, and no one ever performed it in public
in his lifetime. Still, it has proved enduring, and practically every chamber
group in the world has since played and recorded it.
The present
recording finds five people performing it who have played it together many
times before. Yet unlike so many of the fine, mature recordings of the piece by
artists like Brendel, Curzon, Richter, Ax, and the like, it’s a delight to hear
what is so consciously a youthful performance by five relatively young, albeit
rather well-known, European artists. After all, Schubert wrote it when he was
only in his early twenties himself and at a happy time in his life. One might
expect as much from its performance.
Almost every
movement shows a vigor and cheerfulness that is hard to resist, although,
curiously, the final movement, marked “Allegro giusto,” is hardly that. It’s
only here that the quintet of players slow down, catch their breath so to
speak, and end on a relaxed, though still cheerful note. The easy knock against
the performance might be that it’s too glib, too superficial, and that’s true;
however, we have to remember that the “Trout” is mostly surface glitz, anyway.
If you want profound, try Brendel.
Accompanying the
“Trout” is a set of variations on the song “Trockne Blumen” from the composer’s
song cycle Die schone Mullerin.
Schubert wrote it just a few years before his early death, and it contains more
than a passing note of melancholy. The disc concludes with the very brief, very
simple, and very beautiful quintet arrangement of “Litanei auf das Fest aller
Seelen,” another song setting of a poem, this one “celebrating the peace of the
soul,” as described by Adelaide de Place in the disc’s informational booklet.
It has a delicately expressive “Ave Maria” feel to it, and it’s a shame it
lasts less than two minutes.
While the sound is
not too spectacular and oddly seems to favor the left side of the stage, it is
quiet and well balanced. All in all, I enjoyed this version of the “Trout” when
I first heard it, and it continues to please, even if it is not at the top of
the pile.
