Quintet ZRI reimagine Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C to sound as radical as when it was first written

Quintet ZRI reimagine Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C to sound as radical as when it was first written.

Bursting with folk and Hungarian themes, it is rescored here to include clarinet, santouri (cymbalom) and accordion, and is interleaved with traditional tunes.

The group takes its name from ‘Zum Roten Igel’, or ‘The Red Hedgehog’, the name of the major concert venue in Vienna in Schubert’s time – but also of the tavern just behind it, where bands played and composers caroused into the night; at one point, Schubert even lived next door.

His fluid embrace of folk tradition in this much-loved work is brought out in this exciting version, reflecting the daring and profound qualities of the piece itself.

The connections between Schubert and gypsy music may not always be clear to audiences now, but they were strongly felt in his own time. The Hungarian elements in the String Quintet and parts of the Winterreise have been noted ever since they were written; Schubert also wrote a Divertissement à la hongroise and there is a catalogue of other works that seem to reflect this style. His first devotees understood this, and there is even a romanticised 19th-century picture of him sitting and writing out the music in the countryside.

Schubert recognised the height of his own romantic aspirations in the see-saw between virtuoso abandon and deep pathos of gypsy music, and also the alienation and defiance that it represented.

In this performance, the artists’ aim is to attempt to go through the looking glass to present the much-loved String Quintet in the full glory of its radicalism and originality.