Schubert/Kissine String Quartet in G major

Kremerata Baltica/Gidon Kremer

ECM 476 1939

Well argued in the accompanying notes, this arrangement and expansion makes for exciting listening. The piece, Schubert's last, with its frantic tremolandi, seems to be bursting the seams of the string quartet genre up to then. Victor Kissine's arrangement does retain string quartet texture for the more intimate moments and the orchestral-sounding tuttis in the original quartet become real orchestral tuttis. The youthful orchestra surmounts the technical challenges with zest, and a reverberant acoustic enhances the feeling of live music making. A recommendable new look at a key masterwork in the classical music canon.

Peter Grahame Woolf