Allegro 
Andante 
Scherzo 
Presto 
 

‘There’s nothing here at all: leave well alone and stick to writing songs.’ This was the damning verdict given to Schubert by violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh after he led a private performance of Death and the Maiden at the house of composer Franz Lachner in 1826. As the leader who had given the first performances of many of Beethoven’s string quartets, Schuppanzigh knew the possibilities of the form as well as anyone at the time, but Schubert’s daring and originality in this work clearly eluded him.  

Death and the Maiden was Composed in March 1824 (its title was derived from an earlier song by Schubert of the same name used as the theme of the second movement and this profound and sometimes disturbing string quartet was not performed in public during Schubert’s lifetime. When it was first published in 1831 it soon attracted a much more positive response: the critic for the Vossische Zeitung (Berlin’s leading newspaper) wrote in 1833 of a work ‘abundant in originality’. Robert Schumann declared that ‘only the excellence of such a work as Schubert’s D minor Quartet – like that of many of his others – can in any way console us for his early and grievous death; in a few years he achieved and perfected things as no one before him.’ 

The four-movement structure may look conventional, but as well as the startling dramatic contrasts of the first movement, and the extraordinary song variations that constitute the slow movement, the Scherzo, with its tense syncopations is a brilliant reworking and expansion of one of Schubert’s German Dances (D790, No. 6) for solo piano. It’s a startling transformation. 

The finale is equally remarkable: an unremitting Tarantella – the wild dance that traditionally wards off madness and death – structured as a large rondo, beginning with an austere statement of the main theme that is almost entirely bereft of harmony. The Prestissimo ending contains some of the most dramatic and exciting harmonic shifts in all Schubert, and pushes mercilessly towards a defiant, unsettling close.  

© Nigel Simeone 2014