Schubert: “Trout Quintet” D667, Hummel: Piano Quintet op 87. Hausmusik (Cyril Huvé, Monica Huggett, Roger Chase, Richard Lester, Chi-Chi Nwanoku). EMI Reflexe CDC 7 54264 2 (1991) barcode 077775426427
Recorded October 1990
As fine an interpretation you will get on period instruments, with an imaginative coupling
Originally posted on Amazon.com circa September 2006, and apparently deleted by those idiots
It was an obvious but imaginative idea to pair Schubert’s famous “Trout” quintet with Hummel’s quintet opus 87, written for the same instruments, as some records indicate that the commission addressed by amateur cellist Sylvester Paumgartner to Schubert requested from the composer that the piece’s scoring should be the same as Hummel’s. The pairing is also valuable in that it enables us to asses Schubert’s incomparable superiority, his unquenching wealth of melodic invention.
Hausmusik and Cyril Huvé have recorded both pieces on period instruments – fortepiano and gut-stringed instruments. Now the tone of the string and bow instruments is perhaps a tad sweeter, but not strikingly different from modern instruments. It is with the fortepiano that difference in tone color with modern instruments is most dramatic: Huvé’s instrument sounds very much like a Schroeder-like toy piano (of course nobody has ever actually heard Schroeder’s toy piano, but one can easily imagine how it sounds: not powerful, mechanical-sounding, brittle at the top – like a toy piano, in sum). Is this how Schubert’s instrument sounded, and how he wanted it to sound? One may express doubts, not so much because Huvé is playing a restored French Erard from 1822 rather than a Viennese instrument, but because his fortepiano was 168 years-old at the time of the recording, while Schubert obviously did not play an instrument that old: it might have been more “authentic” to play on a modern copy, then.
Be it as it may, and provided you can get accustomed to the very peculiar sound of the fortepiano, the interpretation is as good as you will get of Schubert’s “Trout”. The players display a fine sense of ensemble and their playing is crisp and lively, with fine intonation throughout and beautiful string tone. True, the opening “Allegro” doesn’t follow what would be expected from” baroque-informed” practice: tempo is fairly ample, but with plenty of energy and fine attention to Schubert’s accent markings. On the other hand the ensuing “Adagio” is indeed flowing and with fine rhythmic crispness, but no perceptible loss of lyricism. The “Presto” (3rd movement) is lively and spirited with merry bounce, and its central trio section maintains a commendable unity of tempo, imparting it an ongoing sense of merriment. In the 4th movement’s variations, Monica Hugget’s trills are particularly felicitous and her tone shows no trace of shrillness. The movement’s coda is lively and gay, and the Finale continues in the same mood.
In sum, if you want to hear what it might have sounded in Schubert’s time, this is as fine an interpretation you will find, with an imaginative coupling to top it off. The recording is now available in a budget five-CD box of recordings by Hausmusik on Virgin Classics, barcode 724356235229:
