Another “Death and the Maiden”, you say? Me, too. But once I played this ravishing disc, it was hard to even recall the initial objections, let alone even my favorites of the past. Which, I might add, includes such notables as the Alban Berg Quartet (and this current release cannot really match the outrageously manic string-slashing that inflects their recording), or the old Juilliard reading: sharp, intense, and incisive. But the Jerusalem Quartet has all of these qualities, if perhaps not as excessive as either one, and most of all they bring a sweetly serene, lyrical bent to the music that smoothes the sharp edges a little but not at all to the detriment of the music. And the sound here is far better than either of these – even the Berg EMI which was always wonderful.
This is a young group that has attached itself to the many-faceted aspects of any type of quality Schubert interpretation, latched on to his emotional core, and is able to explain to us how the pathos in the composer’s life was not one of experience and years, but of a young man trying to come to terms with the struggles of life even at an early age. The reading is, in a word, superb, and catapults to the top of my list.
As an added bonus we have the famous fragment in C-minor, obviously intended to complement a whole but tragically orphaned for any number of reasons the composer saw fit to exercise such judgments on many of his first attempts. The man simply had difficulty finishing things. This is fabulous, and even the mortal sin of 51 minutes may be forgiven this time—but only this time.
— Steven Ritter
