LDV85

Behind its delicacy and warmth, Schubert’s music conceals extraordinary power and violence. The portraits of him have contributed to this misunderstanding: his round face, his good-natured air, his little red cheeks, his glasses give the image of a rather bland and timid personality. His death mask shows that he probably had much more strength of character than we imagine. This duality is reflected in his music, which remains a constant source of wonder for us. It is luminous, but the shadows are never far away. Although they are almost contemporary, these two quartets represent a kind of yin and yang. The tragedy, the blackness of the ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet on the one hand, the gentle nostalgia of ‘Rosamunde’ on the other. The Andante con moto, with its variations on a theme from the song Der Tod und das Mädchen (1817), is the focal point of the ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet. Its opening delineates an icy atmosphere. What is the difficulty of those first eight bars? It lies in the way you have to handle the polyphony, in knowing which voice to emphasise. You have to create a feeling of chords on the piano that change with each beat, while maintaining the long phrase of the chorale-like vocal line. It’s an extremely complex business combining those elements into a single breath, a single phrasing. 14 SCHUBERT ∙ ROSAMUNDE, DEATH AND THE MAIDEN