Saint Frances

This "collaborative exploration" of Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, D. 810 ("Death and the Maiden"), is experimental even by the standards of violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. It offers the Schubert quartet itself, in an arrangement for string orchestra by Kopatchinskaja herself, that preserves the original quartet forces in some passages; between its movements come other works by Augustus Nörmiger, John Dowland, Carlo Gesualdo, and György Kurtág, along with a piece of Byzantine chant, all of them on the theme of death and often making specific musical reference to the content of the Schubert.