The fifth movement ends with serene notes from the clarinet the sixth opens with an ominous buzzing from the strings – it's a strange bit of music with a real sense of danger. The Octet is written in a major key but the feeling is of a minor one there is melancholy and apprehension. Schubert mixes the light and the dark more subtly than any other composer. It was written for a group of people interacting with one another: you need a sense of that. We were able to sit very close, and it made me realise how important it is to hear chamber music live. The last time I heard it live was in our local church in Twickenham. He had already been diagnosed with syphilis, so he knew he had a fatal disease. It's an extraordinary, sublime piece that lasts for about an hour, with six movements, for eight musicians. I'd choose the last movement of the F major Octet, which Schubert wrote in 1824 in a single month. For me the Quintet will always represent youth, friendship and the warmth of the shared experience. These were some of the most fun evenings of my life. Later, while I was a student, we would often put on marathon chamber music evenings that would last all night, with the ensembles growing in size. What always struck me was the transcendental and spectacular moment when the melody breaks out in the cellos. With both my parents string players, and as a violinist myself, I grew up playing the piece with family and friends. Marin Alsop, conductorĮasily my favourite piece is his last chamber work, the String Quintet in C major, featuring two cellos. If I could have only one note, I'd pick that first chord.
Schubert always has a real intimacy and tenderness, but there is something very personal about this – even that first chord. The first movement took 35 minutes, the tempo was so slow. The first time I heard it was in 1989 at the Royal Festival Hall I came down from Manchester to hear Sviatoslav Richter play. He wrote a great deal of dark music, particularly during the last two years of his life, and although there's always some hope and light, this is unusual: it's more optimistic, lighter than the other works written in that period. Just one? If you put a gun to my head I'd probably go for the G major Piano Sonata. We asked musicians and enthusiasts which work they couldn't live without. (Radio is a peculiarly Schubertian medium, the most intimate way of connecting a composer and listener.) There is a whole life revealed in his music, and if you really listen to him, Schubert will change yours, too. A new Radio 3 season starting this Friday, The Spirit of Schubert, will give us that chance.
Yet the more we know about his music, the more there is to explore. It was decades before his achievement was recognised the "Unfinished" Symphony premiered in 1865, 37 years after his death. Yet there was only one public concert of his music in his lifetime. He wrote more than 600 songs, more than a dozen string quartets and 21 piano sonatas he completed seven symphonies, with many more left unfinished he wrote operas, masses, piano trios and duets. Living almost entirely in his home town of Vienna, he was a loyal but occasionally cantankerous and drunk friend to a tight-knit groups of artists, poets and writers. The simple facts of Franz Schubert's life shed little light on the enormous emotional range of his music, and the seismic effect his work has had.
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