String Quartet in G major D 887 (op. post. 161)
String Quartet in G minor D 173

Following the outstanding success of Volumes I and II of the Schubert String Quartet series, the Mandelring Quartet now present Vol. III. Once again an early work has been coupled with a late one. Eleven years lie between the eighteen-year-old composer's early Quartet in G minor and the Quartet in G major written when he was twenty-nine. The present combination of works illustrates the compositional development covered by Schubert during these years. If, despite his imaginative way of dealing with tradition, he still felt rather bound to it during his early creative years, during the later years it was at most a backdrop through which only a glimmer of formal norms can be perceived. Schubert was hardly rewarded for such originality not one of his string quartets was published during his lifetime and none of the later quartets were publicly performed. They were, at any rate, far too technically difficult to be managed by anything less than a professional quartet, the only exception being the "Rosamunde" Quartet (Vol. II). The G-major Quartet, in its length of 50 minutes alone, already goes beyond the customary scope of the chamber works of its time. The musical means, too, including tremoli, large-scale developments and huge curves of intensifi cation have orchestral character the movements' structures are unusual and independent. Schubert composed the G-minor Quartet, on the other hand, for the domestic family string quartet. Although this Quartet is a good deal more strongly orientated on the traditions of its time, it is also clear here that Schubert's phase of assimilation and imitation of musical models was gradually drawing to a close. The Mandelring Quartet have succeeded in developing a musical vision with the highest level of interpretative expertise. The drama hidden in these quartets is exposed and revealed to the listener in an organic manner through all ups and downs, thanks also to the excellent recording technique.