It’s a family affair, this: two generations of the Flemish Kuijken dynasty (brothers Sigiswald and Wieland, plus Sigiswald’s daughters Sara and Veronica), who share a proclivity for period techniques, but opt for modern instruments on this recording. Schubert wrote his cello quintet in the autumn of 1828, riddled with the syphilis that would kill him just a couple of months later. It took a quarter of a century for the score to be published, but what a generous and profound parting statement it is. Usually the instrumentation – string quartet plus an extra cello (played here by Michel Boulanger) – makes for gorgeously dark textures, but the Kuijkens somehow keep things airy. There’s a lightweight quality to the first movement’s singing theme, a breezy spaciousness to the Adagio, a drowsy bounce to the Scherzo’s driving rhythms. It all sounds lovely, but puzzlingly laid-back for a piece that Sigiswald describes as “final and extensive witness to the deepest conditions of Schubert’s soul”.
