String Quintet (Schubert) violins; Steven Dann, viola; and Anner Bylsma and Kenneth Slowik, cellos. String Quintet (Schubert) Franz Schubert's final chamber work, the String Quintet in C major (D. 956, Op. posth. 163) is sometimes called the "Cello Quintet" because it is scored for a standard string quartet plus an extra cello instead of the extra viola which is more usual in conventional string quintets. It was composed in 1828 and completed just two months before the composer's death. The first public performance of the piece did not occur until 1850, and publication occurred three years later in 1853. Schubert's only full-fledged string
String Quintet (Bruckner) In a letter to the Florian priest and Regens Chori Ignaz Traumihler Bruckner reports on the completion of his string quintet) and at the same time hopes for the premiere by Josef Hellmesberger: "My quintet is ready! Hofkapellm (dialect). Hellmesberger is completely out of joint with joy, u wills perform. He's totally changed, u is huge." In fact, Hellmesberger had hesitated with the premiere. The Bruckner biographer August Göllerich notes: "As with the genius of any impression is converted into a gigantic, Bruckner seems to have taken even some authoritative words of Hellmesberger on the now completed quintet too seriously."