SCHUBERT String Quartets: No. 5 in B♭; in c, “Quartettsatz.” String Trio in B♭, D 471. 5 Minuets, D 89. Overture in c, D 8 (ed. Hess)1 • Kodály Qrt; Gyözö Máthé (va)1 • NAXOS 8.557126 (55:48)

This disc, volume seven in the Kodály’s cycle of the Schubert quartets, should prove a revelation to anyone unfamiliar with the composer’s early works, everything here produced while he was still in his teens. Maybe he was not quite the prodigy that Mendelssohn was at the same age. Nonetheless, the youthful Schubert possessed an imagination and daring that remain astonishing for an adolescent and—even more than in his first four symphonies (also teenage productions)—suggest the influence of Beethoven. The earliest score, the C-Minor Overture in the Hess arrangement for string quintet, was written in 1811. The latest (and probably most familiar) in the group, the one-movement Trio, dates from 1816, when Schubert was 19. Along with the Minuets and unlike the other works in this release, it is dominated by the song-like lyricism that was a trademark of the composer. To be sure, this trait is present to some extent in everything on this release, but not to the exclusion of a Sturm und Drang intensity that would not prove as prevalent in the composer’s later and more familiar chamber works.

Throughout, the Kodály plays superbly, capturing all the free-wheeling spirit of the music and projecting it with an intensity underscored by a prevailing tone that often has an apt gruff astringency. Conversely, in the Trio and Minuets, the tone becomes less biting, occasionally to the point of welcome sweetness. Throughout, tempos are well judged, balances ideal, each voice gaining its due. With a recording that lends the musicians a welcome small-hall intimacy free of any of the audible breathing that on some releases is obtrusive, this modestly priced disc is most welcome and remarkably revealing of the master to come.

FANFARE: Mortimer H. Frank