Mozart String Quartets 14 19

This series of performances dates from between 1966 (when the six quartets Nos. 14-19 dedicated to Haydn were recorded) to 1973 and was rightly saluted on its completion as a fine achievement. The playing of the Quartetto Italiano has a freshness, range and subtlety that vividly realizes the music in all its variety, while technical problems seem to have been solved so that the music-making can be both spontaneous-sounding and thoughtful throughout.

Recorded between 1989 and 2004, the Hagen Quartet's recordings of Mozart's complete music for string quartet is clearly the finest set of the works released in the early digital age. For one thing, because the collection includes not only the 23 canonical string quartets but also the three early Divertimenti for string quartet, the five Fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier arranged by Mozart, and the late Adagio and Fugue in C minor, their set really is the complete music for string quartet.

Louis Spohr’s string quartets combined the Classical finesse of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven with the early Romantic innovations of the Quatuor brilliant, in which the virtuosic first violin enjoys particular prominence. Popular with contemporary audiences and influential during the first half of the 19th century, these suavely imaginative chamber works are now once more becoming appreciated for their originality, emotional light and shade, and historical importance.

Mozart was still in nappies at the time when Haydn more or less single-handedly invented the string quartet. Nearly half a century later, as he struggled - and failed - to complete his last quartet, Beethoven was already at work on his Eroica Symphony. In the interim, Haydn wrote considerably more quartet masterpieces than Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert put together, raising the medium to a level of sophistication, subtlety and originality that provided a yardstick for all later composers. Mind you, it took him some time to get there: it isn't until the eighth CD of this set that we reach the first of the unequivocally great works, the six quartets which make up Op. 20.

This is the Amadeus Quartet's second complete recording of Mozart's String Quartets for Deutsche Grammophon. The ensembles first recording in mono during the early 1950's received such international acclaim that it all but insured that these modern stereo performances recorded mostly in the late 1960's would be sure winners. They were, and have remained is DG's catalogue ever since. Characterized by incomparable ensemble playing and a thorough understanding of Mozart's humor and wit, these performances are simply as good as it gets.