Mimi Ezust tells us her favorite recording of Schubert's Octet is . . .

>Mozzafiato and L'Archibudelli all the way.  It's light, clean, lovely,
>full of expressive qualities, and those players have skill to BURN.  Don't
>know if this will sound just right to you, but it's certainly worth a few
>listens to find out.

My favorite happens to be played on traditional instruments but not played
traditionally.

It is played by a group of twenty Cleveland Orchestra musicians under the
direction of George Szell.  The three woodwinds are joined not by five
string soloists, but by a seventeen string chamber orchestra [4-4-4-3-2].
Szell commented, "It is a heavenly piece and much too little known because
played only for the relatively small crowd of chamber music enthusiasts.
It deserves to be enjoyed by a wider circle of music lovers, and to perform
it with a small chamber orchestra instead of with string soloists is as
little of a sacrilege as doing the same thing with a Mozart Divertimento
and similar works."

The recording I have was made in 1965 with Robert Marcellus on clarinet;
Myron Bloom on horn; George Goslee on Bassoon; led by principal players
Rafael Druian, violin; Bernhard Goldschmidt on second violin; Abraham
Skernick on viola; Lynn Harrell on cello and Jacques Posell on bass.

Mark