Schubert: Piano Quintet in A, "The Trout".

Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A The Beaux Arts Trio (augmented) and the Grumiaux Quartet (augmented). PentaTone Classics 5186 121.

Schubert's "Trout" was probably the first piece of chamber music I ever feel in love with, but until the appearance of the Beaux Arts' rendition on Philips in the mid seventies, I had never had a particular preference for any one recording. That all changed the first time I listened to this sublime performance and then listened to it again, and again.

The "Trout" piano quintet was inspired in part by a song of Schubert's, aptly "The Trout," and in part by an earlier quintet by Hummel. Schubert's friend, Albert Stadler, wrote years later that Schubert composed his quintet "at the special request of my friend Sylvester Paumgartner, who was absolutely delighted with the delicious little song. At his wish the quintet had to preserve the structure and instrumentation of the Hummel quintet, recte Septet, which at that time was still new. Schubert soon finished it; the score he retained himself." In any case, the song is really only quoted in the many variations of the fourth movement, but the whole thing is a delight from beginning to end, filled with the kind of melodies you go away humming for days.

The coupling this time out is Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, with George Pieterson on clarinet and violinist Arthur Grumiaux's quartet. It was recorded a year earlier than the Schubert, 1974, but in the same Concertgebouw location, so both works have a similar sound, round and soft and faintly glowing. The Mozart is, of course, fine, but I miss "Death and the Maiden," the coupling on Philip's own second CD of the "Trout." Naturally, either coupling is better than that of the original LP, which was none.

PentaTone remind us that both selections on their disc derive from the era of quadraphonics, when Philips and others were testing the four-channel waters. Philips wound up shelving the idea and just releasing the stereo versions on vinyl, but now we have them in four discrete channels if you have the SACD playback equipment to listen to them that way. I listened only to the disc's stereo layer on this hybrid multichannel/stereo disc. Interestingly, I found the sound of PentaTone's "Trout" slightly different from that found on the Philips disc; the stereo versions were apparently mastered separately. The first Silver Line Philips mastering of the "Trout" was a little bright and hard and over emphasized the violin. The second Philips mastering improved the situation, and this new PentaTone is even better still at making the sound smoother and more agreeable. The snag is that if you don't own an SACD player, you might not want to pay the extra money for the small improvement in straight stereo sound. Six of one....