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Masterclass: Schubert ‘Death and the Maiden’ String Quartet, second movement

2024-11-29T06:44:00

Use this one William Coleman_(c) Rüdiger Schestag

Violist of the Kuss Quartet William Coleman emphasises the importance of creating a narrative arc in this movement, which encompasses a journey of emotional ambivalence

The Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache once said that in the opening note of a piece, you should feel the last. ‘Beginning and end live together.’ As a quartet, we have become ever more careful not to get lost in the detail of every harmony and phrase, or fall in love with every dissonance. Instead, we try to develop a sense of the piece’s entire arc – its tempo, energy and narrative. Like every familiar journey, you come to know where to slow down, to look more closely, and when to move onwards more forcefully towards the end. And hopefully you might indeed fall in love with a previously unspotted dissonance…

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