Luogo e data di registrazione		Schloß Grafenegg, Reitschule (Austria) - 8/9 June 1993
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineer / Editing		Stephan Schellmann (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Sony / Vivarte - SK 53 982 - (1 CD) - durata 63' 51" - (p) 1994 - DDD
	Cover Art		Gartenterrasse by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Photo: Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin
	Note		-

Chamber Music by Young Schubert The chamber works included in the present recording were all written before or at the beginning of the period of upheaval in Schubert's life when he succeeded in breaking away from his formal models and going his own creative way. In other words, they are early works that predate the period 1817-1822 and vouchsafe an insight into the composer's musical origins. Of his youthful string quartets from the years between 1812 and 1816, the String Quartet in E flat major of November 1813 occupies a central position not only chronologically but also in terms of its formal design. Schubert's tendency to merge formal sections by means of monothematic structures is already on the decline here. None the less, he still dispenses with overtly contrastive thematic elements in the opening movement and attempts instead to generate tension by means of occasionally grandiose gestures. A similar sense of balance is also found in the slow movement, which forgoes the usual contrastive middle section. The relatively dance-like Andante movements of the earlier quartets are replaced here, for the first time in Schubert's writing for the medium, by an Adagio. That the young composer was perfectly capable of transcending traditional form in his handling of the different types of movement and of creating textures of filigree delicacy is clear from the Scherzo and final movement, both of which are doininated by seemingly weightless melodic lines coupled with equally airy, fleet-footed writing in the accompanying voices. In the Scherzo this melodic vein is impressively overshadowed by the C minor dance of the Trio and interrupted in the Finale by the serenade- like tone of the second subject. The almost orchestral bravura manner that typifies this Finale - a manner as clearly intentional as it is masterly - may suggest the importance this work must have had for its sixteen-year-old composer: a relatively restful diversion intended for the circle of music lovers who frequented his parents' house, with links with the recently completed First Symphony, but inspired, more especially, by his attempts to write his first fully worked-out opera, Des Teufels Lustschloß, which was to preoccupy him now and during the months ahead, while he was training to become a primary-school teacher. Schubert's contribution to the medium of the string trio is limited to two works, of which the first was to remain a fragment. Work on both of them (September 1816 and September 1817 respectively) coincided with a particularly productive phase in his creative output, when he was concentrating on lieder, operas, masses and also instrumental music. Why he should have turned his attention to string trios at all at this time is hard to say and based for the most part on speculation. One thing, at least, is clear (and this is a point that Schubert shares with most of his predecessors and contemporaries), namely, that he preferred writing string quartets, not least as a compositional exercise, even though he wrote noticeably fewer such works at the time he was working on his trios. The period of upheaval mentioned in the opening paragraph had already begun by now, and from this point of view the string trios may perhaps be regarded as attempts at reorientation. What is striking about both of them is their backward-looking tendency and almost rococo-like delicacy, notwithstanding their otherwise traditional design. Such an attitude has left its mark not only on the clarity of Schubert's handling of first-movement sonata form, the motivic and tonal distinction between the modulatory middle sections and the often simple periodicity in the structuring of the themes; equally characteristic is the nature of the ornamental writing in varied sections within the movements or in densely figured final phrases. It seems almost as though Schubert had wanted to follow an existing formal design in broaching the genre, rather than attempt to invest that form with new and idiosyncratic ideas. External influences may also have played a part here. According to a report by Schubert's friend Leopold von Sonnleithner, the group of amateur musicians that met at Schubert`s parents' house around 1814 often played Haydn's Baryton Trios, and the charm and melodiousness of these jewel-like pieces may well have drawn the nineteen- and twenty-year-old composer into their creative sway, although the striking similarities in the figural writing and handling of the individual voices are no doubt due to the general problems of writing for three string instruments. In order to avoid excessive multiple stopping, the composer often seeks salvation in luxuriantly playing around with the melody or in arpeggio passages, both typical features of numerous earlier examples of the string trio as a genre. It is also conceivable that both Trios were written for private concerts that were held regularly every winter from 1816 onwards at the home of Leopold von Sonnleithner`s parents. (The fact that both works were written in the month of September would certainly lend support to this suggestion.) It is impossible, however, to define the origins and aims of these works any more precisely. Still less can we be certain why Schubert broke off work on the first of the Trios in the middle of the second movement, at a point where, thirty-nine bars into it, a central section based on different melodic material would have followed had he adopted the model of the second Trio. We may be on safer ground in assuming a concrete reason for his writing the second Trio, of which there are in fact two surviving versions. The first version exists only in the form of a full score, the three parts of which Schubert then proceeded to write out again, radically changing a number of details and thereby producing the second version. In short, we are dealing with two stages in the same compositional process. All such changes affect imbalances in the first version. The end of the first movement, for example, has been rewritten in such a way that the original breakneck demisemiquavers have been turned into more manageable semiquavers, while the bridge passages, which had previously involved over-abrupt changes in harmony and figuration, have been extended in length. This polishing process also involved numerous other details of articulation and dynamics, with the result that the second version (as recorded here) is palpably superior to the first. Werner Aderhold (Translation: © 1994 Stewart Spencer)