Schubert: String Quartet in E flat major D.87; String Quartet in G major D.887

The (also known as the ) is a young group with some years of top-notch training under its belt, and that shows here in the excellent technical work at many junctures. Hear the especially spooky, perfectly controlled opening of the first movement of the , 's swan song in the genre. One can truly feel looking toward the eternal questions here. The early , gets a superb reading here from start to finish; the quartet players catch the strangeness of this work, which wrote when he was just 16, but that sounds like nothing else at the time, even . Sample the second-movement Scherzo, with its two sections that seem to inhabit two different worlds. The news is a little less good in the ; the group's edgy, minimal-vibrato playing begins to wear over the 22-minute movement, and one has a desire for some lyricism. However, there are many beautifully executed moments along the way. This is plainly a young quartet to watch, and they are well recorded here at Potton Hall in Suffolk. ~ James Manheim