Masterpieces Unboxed: Schuberts Forellenkwintet

Masterpieces Unboxed

How is the music structured, what is it about, what story does the composer want to tell, and who or what served as sources of inspiration? In Masterpieces Unboxed, we dissect masterpieces of chamber music. Presenter Robbrecht Van Cauwenberghe, together with the Marigold Piano Quartet and double bassist Sasha Witteveen, dives into Schubert's unparalleled Trout Quintet . They take you along hidden details and surprising twists, with live excerpts that cast the work in a new light. After the 'unboxing,' the entire quintet is performed.

Schubert's Trout Quintet

It was not much that the good Sylvester Paumgartner, amateur bassist in Steyr, asked his guest Franz Schubert for: a chamber music work for double bass. And, oh yes, his favorite song Die Forelle had to be incorporated into it. Paumgartner could not have suspected that his request would result in one of the most popular pieces in the entire history of music. Schubert was a happy man in the summer of 1819: healthy, among friends, and appreciated—and you can hear that. But it is precisely the light melancholy in the background, so typical of Schubert, that makes listening to the Forelle Quintet a breathtaking adventure.