These are spacious, fine-toned performances of two of the four quartets Schubert wrote in his 17th year. The Leipzig Quartet are a very polished group; the slowish speeds give them room to introduce a lot of expressive contrast and to point phrases with ‘Viennese’ charm. The effect is to make Schubert’s prolific youthful inventiveness seem even more colourful than usual. The way they explore the full emotional colour of all the unexpected twists of harmony is especially striking. Next to the Melos recordings (on a three-disc set) they do seem in some movements to be rather sluggish and lacking in vigour. This is most obvious in the Allegro Minuet of D46 – for all the distinction of their playing, the Leipzig group can’t match the uncomplicated elan of the Melos Quartet here. On the other hand, the brisk, businesslike Melos style can miss some of the emotional depths, in the fugal slow introduction to D46, for instance, or the opening Allegro maestoso of D68. Here, the Leipzig Quartet give us a darkly-shadowed piece, full of dramatic pauses and obsessively concerned with recurring rhythms and motifs; the Melos version (with the repeats) is more exciting, more cogent, but also, perhaps, more ordinary.
This CD is Vol. 8 of a complete series of Schubert’s chamber music for strings. It’s very complete – this record contains two different versions of D68’s first movement, as well as a miniature set of Landler for two violins, played beautifully, but with almost too much finesse for such uncomplicated music. The recording is excellent, clear and full sounding – distinctly superior to the early 1970s Melos set.DD