Is Schubert your desert-island composer? If so, your palm tree awaits: the Takacs Quartet returns to Rackham Auditorium Sunday afternoon with the second of three Schubert concerts it presents here this season under University Musical Society auspices. The concert features an early quartet (1814) in B-flat Major, D. 112, plus the much-loved “Rosamunde,” D. 804, from 1824, and the last string quartet, the G Major, D. 887, from 1826.

The final concert of the three takes place April 8. It’s not a Schubert anniversary year that led the quartet, a frequent visitor to Ann Arbor, to contemplate a three-concert cycle of Shubert quartets and quintets, with guest pianists and cellists sitting in for the larger works. Call it love.

“So much of Schubert is so simple, and it’s that simplicity that’s so attractive and wonderful,” said Takacs violists Geraldine Walther, who spent much of her free time during the group’s recent European tour and London recording sessions reading David Schroeder’s “Our Schubert: His Enduring Legacy.”

“Schubert just reveals himself as so honest, he puts everything out there, going back and forth from major to minor, joy and the other side of joy.”

One of the things that impressed Walther as she read Schroeder’s tome is just how many composers and artists claimed Schubert as theirs - leading to the book’s “Our Schubert” title.

“He had all the composers at his feet,” she said. “When Schubert died, Schumann said he cried all night. The amazing thing is that so many composers feel he belongs to them personally. He is mine too. His music is so heartfelt and so genuine, it goes straight to your heart. I’m glad to own so much Schubert and to get to play it.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean playing it is easy - or simple, for all the music’s “simplicity.”

The G Major quartet, which Walther describes as “an absolutely symphonic piece,” requires tremendous stamina.

“You just hunker down, and it’s a voyage,” she said. “It’s a long piece, but you sit down and start playing, and it just carries you along even though you have been wondering, ‘How am I going to get through it?’ And the last movement is just so fast — I knew our guys would take a fast tempo, and of course they do.”

Repetition and how to handle it is also an issue in Schubert.

“You have to use the repetition to drive the music dramatically so it doesn’t become boring,” Walther said. The details are important, but you have to also keep sight of the forest and not get stuck in the trees. You have to be keeping the big picture in mind as you get the little things that really matter. It’s amazing how these things are built, and you have to get exactly the right color, the right emotion, to set up the next section so you kind of just sweep along and use the momentum and energy of the performance to bring it together. I never get tired of it. It’s just the best.”