Schubert Trouts

Silke Avenhaus had wanted to record Schubert’s Trout Quintet for a long time. Now five European composers were additionally asked to quasi-casually prolong Schubert’s ambivalences into the present by supplying their own variations.

The commission called for works that were to be limited in length, and each composer was asked to focus his attention on a particular instrument. Although all of their pieces are based on the Trout theme, the resulting works vary utterly in terms of character and tempo.

As Avenhaus puts it, this is a ‘godsend’. The new compositions can be grasped as individual movements of a contemporary Trout quintet, but one can also combine them in several different ways.

(From lines notes by Elgin Heuerding)

Silke Avenhaus, When-Xiao Zheng, Danjulo Ishizaka, Lena Neudauer and Rick Stotijn perform works by Franz Schubert, Ferran Cruixent, Gerald Resch, Johannes X. Schachtner, Dejan Lazic and Osmo Tapio Räihälä.

‘It’s a buoyant Trout, with Avenhaus’s glistening pianism conspiring with the ever-responsive double bass of Rick Stotijn to dart effortlessly between the work’s quicksilver changes of mood.’

– Gramophone

‘Schuberts A-Dur-Quintett wird von diesen frappierend dynamisch agierenden Spielern so beglückend in Szene gesetzt, dass man hier schon von einer Referenzaufnahme sprechen kann.’

– Klassik Heute 10/10