Schubert: String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D810 'Death and the Maiden' (Der Tod und das Mädchen)

Sono Luminus is proud to bring you the second CD from The Jasper String Quartet, The Kernis Project: Schubert, pairing the celestial works of Aaron Jay Kernis and Franz Schubert. This enchanting project is the follow-up to their previous release, The Kernis Project: Beethoven (DSL92142).

Not only do Schubert and Kernis both ruminate in the angelic and spiritual realms for these works, their overall compositional structures are strikingly similar. Both feature monumental opening movements, transcendent slow movements, short and driving scherzos, and devilish finales. Though different in many respects, these two works garner startling parallels despite the 166 years between them.

Winner of the 2012 Cleveland Quartet Award, the Jasper String Quartet has been hailed as “sonically delightful and expressively compelling” (The Strad) and as “powerful” (The New York Times). They play “with sparkling vitality and great verve, ...polished, engaged, and in tune with one another.” (Classical Voice of North Carolina) Based in New Haven, CT, the Jasper Quartet enjoys prestigious appointments as 2010-12 Quartet-in-Residence at Oberlin Conservatory (Oberlin, OH) and Ensemble-in-Residence at Classic Chamber Concerts (Naples, FL).

One of the youngest composers ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Aaron Jay Kernis is among the most esteemed musical figures of his generation. His music is featured prominently on orchestral, chamber, and recital programs worldwide, and he has been commissioned for many of America‘s foremost performing artists, including sopranos Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, violinists Joshua Bell, James Ehnes, and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, guitarists David Tanenbaum and Sharon Isbin, and by institutions including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and Los Angeles and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras, the Walt Disney Company and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among many others.

The Wihan Quartet, formed in 1985, are heirs to the great Czech musical tradition. The Quartet’s outstanding reputation for the interpretation of its native Czech heritage and of the many classical, romantic and modern masterpieces of the string quartet repertoire is widely acknowledged.

Schubert’s late chamber music traverses some of the darkest territory in the introspective world of chamber music. As is typical of the composer, several works draw their music and hidden narrative from songs, most notably ‘Death and the Maiden’, with its spooky tale of love and loneliness. Everywhere a breadth of expression is evident, in long-breathed melodies, spacious developments and (in final movements) limitless reiteration of small motivic units towards conclusions of emphatic strength and resolution. These are works that take the time they need to say what they want to say, and they are marked by continual emotional turbulence, even obsession.

The Guarneri Quartet were remarkable both for their longevity and their consistency of achievement until their retirement in 2007. They were a smoothly integrated ensemble almost from the start of their association in 1961, as a record executive recognised when he went to one of their early concerts and quickly signed them up. They went on to record all the standard repertoire of the genre and much more besides, and with a sweetness worthy of the instruments of their eponymous violin-maker’s name.

The Amadeus Quartet became one of the most important chamber ensembles in the world. The ensemble is still remembered for its sensitive and beautiful interpretations of the classical and romantic repertoire. One of their most frequently performed works was “Death and the Maiden.”