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Andrew McGregor with the best new recordings of classical music.

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Ben Gernon shares his choice of the latest classical releases.

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Building a Library

Tasmin Little selects her favourite version of Franz Schubert's Octet in F major (D. 803)

Franz Schubert鈥檚 Octet in F major was commissioned by the monied amateur clarinettist, Count Ferdinand Troyer, who desired a companion piece to the phenomenally popular septet of his composition tutor, Beethoven. Busy composing his own string quartets at the time, Schubert chose not only to emulate the 6-movement sequence of Beethoven鈥檚 Septet, but to also use as his model the seven-person-strong ensemble conceived by his elder compositional statesman. The decision to add a second violin to the ensemble's instrumental forces may seem like a busy composer trying both to save time, and satisfy the brief of his patron鈥檚 request. The move, though, appears to have served Schubert鈥檚 desire to develop a more orchestral compositional style 鈥� an ambition about which he wrote to his friend 鈥淚 have tried my hand at several instrumental works. I wrote two quartets鈥� and an Octet鈥� in fact I intend to pave my way towards a grand symphony.鈥� His Octet is littered, as a result, with examples of the creativity that Schubert would later employ to great effect in his symphonies.

Winner:
J枚rg Widmann (clarinet)
Dag Jensen (bassoon)
Sybille Mahni (horn)
Isabelle van Keulen, Veronika Eberle (violins)
Rachel Roberts (viola)
Tanja Tetzlaff (cello)
Yasunori Kawahara (double bass)
Avi Avi8553209

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Record of the Week: Andrew鈥檚 top pick.

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