The Mosaïques’ gut strings bring a dark and husky colouring to the quartet in which Schubert stares death in the face, D 810 (Death and the Maiden). The Takacs Quartet’s exemplary rendering for Hyperion in general packs the mightier punch, but the Mosaïques still shine in the slow movement’s lyricism. Also featured is an earlier, tauter Schubert quartet (D 173), with two disquieted outer movements framing a nimble scherzo and an andantino of much courtly charm, dispatched here with unforced beauty. GB
The Sunday Times, 23 May 2010 ★★★★
Schubert’s teenage quartets don’t rank high, but the period-instrument Quatuor Mosaïques show that the G minor is worth hearing, not least the incisive opening movement’s brief but striking development section, whose ghostly sonorities the group bring out vividly. Their performance of Death and the Maiden is music-making of a high-order, felt and carried out by players animated as though by a single mind and impulse, yet each of them seeming to respond afresh at every moment. If they don’t generate quite the headlong impetus of the Takacs’s recent recording, their colours and phrasing, and the subtlety of their playing, are a marvel. At a slightly slower tempo, the presto finale’s strange harmonies and eerie silences are all the more frightening. DC
The Daily Telegraph, 1st June 2010 ★★★★
Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet is so often played it’s in danger of becoming hackneyed, but the Quatuor Mosaïques have restored its freshness. The CD box reproduces Marianne Stokes’ painting in which Death comes to the Maiden as a gentle figure, rather than a grimacing skeleton. The performance is similarly unexpected – chastely serious rather than despairing, but dramatic when it needs to be. Ivan Hewett
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