Mozart Fans Only

Whoops, obviously Bach did not stand on Haydn's shoulders.
I meant to say Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert did.

I came upon this thread as I finished listening to my LPs of Schubert's Piano Trios (Beaux Arts Trio, Philips). Endlessly spellbinding and gorgeous music.

I love Schubert's chamber music but find it a bit overly dramatic at times. I'd never consider it superior to Beethoven's, but I'm speaking of a narrow range of their output which I happen to be familiar with.

you might be interested in some of the later Mozart masterpieces, the String Quintets. He wrote six of them. k593 and K614 are widely thought of as supreme. The artist is the Grumiaux Trio with two guests filling out the roster. Its a phillips LP collection recorded in the 70's. My favorite is K515 in C.

I certainly do not mean to belittle Beethoven, you'd have to be an even bigger fool than me to do that!
A way of putting is, on a scale of 1-10;
Bach is a 27 ,
Schubert and Mozart a 9.5
Beethoven a 9 .

Consider,
Bach died at 65
Beethoven at 56
Mozart at 35
Schubert at 31, and only Beethoven was perhaps as sick as he during his last years.
IMHO , if Franz had lived as long as even Mozart ,well you get it.
50 years ago European critical opinion had Schubert as a relatively minor composer, in the last 2 decades it has shifted greatly, largely to where I stand .
Most of the criticism you hear about his chamber music strikes me as like saying I wouldn't have gone out with the young Elizabeth Taylor because she was too pretty.