The Coull Quartet make a particularly valuable contribution to Schubert year in their first auspicious volume of the composer’s works for string quartet. They determine to trace the oeuvre strictly chronologically (in order of composition, rather than according to Deutsch’s numerical sequence, that is), and this approach pays off immediately.
The juxtaposition of D94 in D (written, like Hagars Klage, at the age of 14) with D46 in C, from two years later, is revelatory. The very first quartet, composed while Schubert was still at boarding school in Vienna, may be a trifle long-winded and wayward, especially in its outer movements; but the Coull emphasize its vigorous textural variety and mischievous games of harmonic hide-and-seek, as well as enjoying the faux-naivete of the third movement Landler.
In between these two quartets came the death of Schubert’s mother, his departure from the court choir as his voice broke, and his first experience of both Die Zauberflote and Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride. What we hear at the start of the C major Quartet is a dark descending canon, de profundis, giving way to a maelstrom of tremolandos, impassioned triplets and eloquent silences before the chromatic opening is fast-forwarded as counter-melody. The Coull have a nicely astringent way with this disquieting music: they are sparing with vibrato, and keep entries raw and incisive.
The E flat Quartet, D87, so often taken as the starting-point in Schubert’s serious quartet output, finds a new equipoise, a new melodic and structural confidence which the Coull reflect in their measured performance of the first movement. It gives way, delightfully, to a hee-hawing Scherzo, before the firm, close harmony of an Adagio in which Roger Coull’s violin rises into sudden, radiant song.'