Schubert: Death and the Maiden

“An outstanding album, was Gramophone magazine’s verdict on the Arod Quartet’s last release, a programme of Schoenberg, Zemlinsky and Webern.  Remaining in Vienna, the young French quartet goes back to the time of Schubert. “We wanted to explore several stylistic phases in Schubert’s life,” they explain. The centrepiece is his gripping Quartet No 14 (‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’/’Death and the Maiden’), written in the final years of his short life and complemented here by the Quartets No 4 and No 12 (‘Quartettsatz’).