Artis Quartett - Schubert: String Quartets D87, 703 & 804 (1995) CD-Rip

The Artis Quartet have all the right Viennese qualifications to play Schubert – their playing is graceful and stylish, with genuine warmth of tone and expression. In the A minor Quartet they take their cue from Schubert’s many expression marks – making the accents and crescendos sound absolutely spontaneous; pointers to the underlying emotion. It helps that they play the many soft passages so delicately; by contrast the more intense, dramatic moments come over strongly without any hint of overplaying, using imaginative variations of tone-colour to point the different shades of feeling. The flowing Andante is a delight, and the restrained lilt of the Minuet, maintaining the melancholic mood, is equally successful. Only in the finale did I find some of the rhythms not ideally poised, but even here there’s much to admire.
They play the early E flat Quartet beautifully too; in the finale the leader’s elegant portamentos, and the rhythmic fizz of the opening, remind us that the young Schubert was writing in the era of both Spohr and Rossini. The C minor Quartettsatz pleased me less. Though in essence it’s another fine and brilliant performance, the frequent hold-ups for accents start to sound rather contrived.
This record is, I think, decisively to be preferred to the Panocha Quartet’s account of D87 and D804. The Supraphon recording lacks the depth and realism of the new Sony, and the performances, though lively and sensitive, don’t have the ardour and spontaneity the Artis Quartet bring to theirs.' -- Duncan Druce