Mozart Flute Quartets Grafenauer, Kremer, Hagen

Though Mozart claimed to dislike the flute, he wrote for it with skill and these quartets, written between 1777 and 1787, are not pot-boilers – pace the late Hans Keller, who wrote that they “show Mozart’s hate for the instrument”, but didn’t bother to explain how. These players, two from the Hagen Quartet, are big names, Gidon Kremer’s not least, and play well as an ensemble, the excellent flautist performing with authority but not overbearingly. Indeed, they give the music love, which entirely redeems some inevitable conventionalities, as for example in the C major with its rather obvious melody and harmony – even Mozart didn’t write a towering masterpiece every day.