Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Quintette Imaginaire
Sandrine Piau (soprano)
Quatuor Psophos – Mathilde Borsarello Hermann (violin), Bleuenn Le Maître (violin), Cécile Grassi (viola), Guillaume Martigné (cello)
rec. August 2024, Cité de la Musique et de la Danse, Soissons, France
Alpha 1157 [66]

This disc is a good idea that doesn’t quite work in the execution due to the nature of the individuals involved. The “imaginary quintet” of the title refers to the fact that most of the disc consists of Schubert songs arranged for string quartet (by Jacques Gandard) instead of piano, and it starts very promisingly with Der Jüngling und der Tod. Here the strings provide a warm, cushioning aural embrace that mirrors the gentle release that Death brings in the song. It’s effective because it’s so bewitching, and it’s an effect that you can’t really achieve with the piano, no matter how skilfully it’s played.

Doubts set in with the addition of Sandrine Piau’s singing, however. She’s a marvellous artist possessed of a beautiful instrument, but the voice is incisive and penetrating in a way that cuts through the gentle comfort that the string cushion supplies and thus creates a clash. Here and in the Mignon Lieder, Piau uses her voice like a spotlight: the strings beguile while Piau penetrates, the voice exposing all the right-angles and pinpointing the precision while avoiding the strings’ gentle ambiguity. This just about works in Heiss mich nicht reden, but otherwise everything feels too spotlit and exposed, eschewing all gentle ambiguity in favour of harsh underlinings.

The opening songs set up a suspicion that a different, softer voice would have worked much better with these string arrangements, and the rest of the disc reluctantly confirms it. The effect isn’t as jarring in Der Musensohn, but it’s still there. Ganymed works better because Piau’s voice captures more of the radiance of nature-worship, which the strings follow, and Wandrers Nachtlied finally approaches something like mutual transcendence between the voice and strings. Viola works mainly because it’s such a long song and, therefore, runs through a huge gamut of moods, so at least some of them work. 

Oddly, you get the opposite problem in Erlkönig. Here I really missed the percussive ferocity of the piano, so central to the drama and terror of the poem and the music. The Psophos players treat it far too gently and with too much refinement, as if it’s taking place in a Regency ballroom rather than a haunted forest. If you’re going to do it on strings, then you have to tear into it as if it’s the opening of Die Walküre; this is far too polite, and Piau’s vocal acting is almost nil, all four of the song’s characters sounding the same. 

So this is a curiosity, but also a missed opportunity, unfortunately. The Psophos’ playing in the two quartet movements is perfectly good, but that seems incidental alongside the disc’s central idea.

Simon Thompson

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Contents
Der Jüngling und der Tod
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt 
Kennst du das Land?
Heiss mich nicht reden, heiss mich schweigen