The Quartet in A minor by Schubert is a beloved work; in some way we group it with the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony as giving us the heart of the composer. But with the quartet as with the symphony, it is doing him an injustice to let the emotional directness, the poetry, the sheer beauty of the musical sound… prevent admiration and appreciation of his technical power: power used with masterly ease in development and formal construction.
“Rosamunde,” the nickname usually employed for the A-minor Quartet and the theme of its graciously serene second movement, has its origins in a theme from Schubert’s incidental music for a play of the same name and which is again used for one of his D. 935 Impromptus for solo piano.
Here is the Hagen Quartet from Salzburg, and the image is of the wonderful violist, Veronica Hagen:
