Luogo e data di registrazione		Musica Théâtre Salle de Musique, La Chaux-de-Fonds (Svizzera) - 17-23 luglio 1977
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Vittorio Negri | Willem van Leewen
	Edizione LP		Philips | 412 401-1 | 1 LP
	Prima Edizione CD		Vedi link alla prima edizione in long playing.
	Note		La collana "Musica da Camera" della Philips riedita negli anni '80 alcune registrazioni del Quartetto Italiano.

On March 31, 1824, Schubert wrote to his friend Leopold Kupelwieser "I have not written many new songs, but I have tried my hand at several instrumental works, for I have composed two string quartets, and an octet, and I want to write another quartet, in fact I estend to pave my way howards a grand symphony in this way. "The two quartet referred to here as being already written are the A minor, D. 804 and the D minor, D. 810; the third, the G major, D. 887 (Schubert's last quartet was not written until two years later). It seems likely that Schubert intended to publish the first two quartets as Op. 29 Nos. 1 and 2, but in fact only the A minor appeared in print during his lifetime; the D minor was published in 1832, four years after his death, the G major not until 1851. Although we may assume that watches (mental, if not physical) had been in existence for some time previously, the G major Quartet was actually committed to papae within a mere 11 days, between June 20 and 30, 1826. A private performance took place soon after this, and the first movement appears to have been played by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in March 1828 at a concert arranged by Schubert himself, but there is no record of the work's being performed in its entirely and in public earlier 1850. The first movement is perhaps the locus classicus of the alternation of major and minor tonalities that is such a characteristic Schubertian fingerprint. It opens with a soft G major chord that culminates, after a crescendo, in a fortissimo in G minor, the process is repeated six bars further on in D major and D minor. In the recapitulation the procedure is reversed (G minor to G major, D minor to D major, while the closing bars of the movement present the two opposing principles in close justaposition, G major only just emerging as the victor. The movement is also remarkable for its bold use of tremolo. The true fast subject is a short motif in dotted rhythm played in dialogue between the first violin and cello (and derived from the initial chord's answering phrase), which together with the substance of the very opening gesture, provides the material for the impassioned development section; the second subject is a syncopated tune on which Schubert duells at understandable lenght. The Andante (in E minor) is a rondo, in which the refrain takes the shape of a gentle, elegiac tune on the cello. The movement's quiet beginning could hardly be farther from suggesting the dramatic, impassioned nature of the two episodes (in G minor and d minor), where the tremoles figuration of the first movement reappears and where Schubert's use of contrasting keys has an andacity that almost anticipates Bartók. The remaining two movements are more convenctional to idiom. The first is a B minor scherzo of tremendous rhythmic impetus (notice the repeated notes in all parts, which again remind us of the tremolo patterns in the first two movements), enclosing a G major trio of Ländler like charm. The second is an extended and rejourceful sonata rondo, in almost uninterrupted 6/8 quaver rhythm and with the same major minor ambivalence we noticed in the opening Allegro. The second theme, which initiates the first episode, has a Rossinian nonchalance, and the third, which is the basic of the second (development) episode, sems to take its tue from the scherzo of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. One cannot help feeling that here Schubert provided, with complete success, the release of tension after three preceding movements that Mozart attempted to achieve in the G major finale of his string Quintet in G minor. Robin Golding

Illustration: Anton Romako (1832-1889) "Das Gasteiner Tal" (Österreichische Galerie, Wien)