This is the greatest piece of chamber music ever written. Two weeks after Frannie finished it, he was dead from a combination of typhoid and secondary syphilis.
I posted the finale a while ago with its Carrie-hand-coming-out-of-the-grave ending, but this scherzo has a playful atmosphere. Schubert writes a violin line that's a cross between bagpipes and country fiddling, and in the Seattle performance, Tessa Lark's second violin hit that brilliantly, thanks to her Bluegrass background. It was Appalachian Schubert.
In most scherzi, the central panel keeps the rhythm going, but in this case, Frannie stops it cold for a second slow movement in the Neapolitan interval, that is, one-half tone upward, C to D-flat. This central panel is a post-death, out-of-body experience set to music, which makes me wonder if he had an inkling of what was about to happen to him.
Back to Rockumentary next week.