New album "Fragment"

With their new album 'Fragment', the Schumann Quartet takes a look at Schubert and 2 ½ of his string quartets: a work of the early years, Rosamunde as a late work and in between the C minor quartet with the Andante fragment.

Why 2 ½ string quartets? – The Quartettsatz D 703, usually played on its own, is followed by a second-movement Andante, a placid narrative. After forty bars, unfortunately, the music dries up, leaving the listener stranded. What are we to make of that? Why did Schubert stop work on a quartet that he had begun in 1820? We don’t know; obviously something else came up. Not for nothing are these years of Schubert’s life, plagued as they are by blind alleys and new directions, regularly described in the literature as his 'crisis years'. The composer, no longer a youth and very much a mature composer, is only human, not an infallible genius. Some of the ideas he had at the time never advanced beyond the fragmentary stage.

The album is now available as CD, download or at the streaming service of your choice.