The Auryn Quartet’s performance of Schubert’s C major Quintet is so immaculately and persuasively realized that, like the work itself, it’s scarcely believable that any human hand was involved. But of course, there are five very much involved human beings here, including cellist Christian Poltéra, and they play with a wealth of human emotion. The cello duet that forms the opening movement’s secondary theme is only one example of many where the players uncannily simulate the sound of human voices (even more so than Rostropovich’s emotive performance with the Emerson Quartet). In the recapitulation, the players again use emotion to demonstrate how this melody’s perspective has been changed by the events of the foregoing development. The Auryns take the serene adagio at a more flowing tempo than we usually hear, yet they still manage to convey the music’s intense rapture as well as its tremendous ferocity in the angry middle section. The players also make the most of the scherzo’s stark contrasts (evoking in the trio, as does the Julliard Quartet, a remote time and place), while perfectly capturing the spirit of Schubert’s finale, with its miraculous amalgamation of the rustic and the refined. Tacet’s dynamically true recording presents the group in an ideally warm and reverberant acoustic, rendering every important detail distinctly audible. [1/1/2002]
