"This glorious chamber work was composed in the last months of Schubert’s life. It is full of wonderful melodies as befits the creator of songs. The principle of contrasts is used in the quintet, vacillating between ecstatic happiness and the depths of desperation and grief. The performance is committed and skillful. Again, the label’s Andreas Spreer feels that since a sound-carrier is by definition a synthetic product, it is appropriate to place the musicians more imaginatively than can be achieved with only a two-channel recording. The first page of the enclosed booklet shows the layout - the viola is dead front on the center channel (woe be it if you lack a center channel - you’ll have to make sure its signal is shared by the left and right as suggested with the Artegra discs reviewed above). The first violin is on the L front channel and the second violin on the R front channel. The first cello is at the right rear surround and the second cello at the left rear surround. Ever wondered what it was like to play in a chamber group such as this? Well, choose your instrument and sit close to that speaker. You’ll get a pretty good idea."
John Sunier

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