Mozart Quartets

After a first disc devoted to Mozart quartets (awarded a ‘Choc de Classica’ and a 'Diapason Découverte’), a second to French music (Debussy, Ravel and Chausson) and a third to two quartets by Schubert, nos.10 and 14 (the mythical Death and the Maiden), the group founded by Nicolas Van Kuijk returns to its first love by recording more Mozart.

The Mozart Piano Quintet was founded in 2000 and has been catapulted to the top echelon of the international music world. Their previous recordings on MDG have all been well received. This recording is one of MDG's best 2+2+2 recordings & all details are clearly audible with a placing of the listener in the best seat of a very fine chamber hall. Enthusiastically recommended.

The Mozart Piano Quintet was founded in 2000 and has been catapulted to the top echelon of the international music world. Their previous recordings on MDG have all been well received. This recording is one of MDG's best 2+2+2 recordings & all details are clearly audible with a placing of the listener in the best seat of a very fine chamber hall. Enthusiastically recommended.

A new GENUIN album featuring the Leopold Mozart Quartet is dedicated to the string quartet works of composer Heinz Winbeck, who died in 2019. The Augsburg ensemble, made of four musicians who are active throughout Germany, is known for its high artistic quality, demanding programming, and enormous versatility. Winbeck's three string quartets were written in a period of only five years, between 1979 and 1984, and are the expression of a mature composer at the height of his powers.

Towards the end of his life, short of money and heavil y in debt, Mozart had the opportunity to visit King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia – a famous patron of the arts and a keen and above-average musician.

Three of these marvellous quartets for flute and string trio were composed in 1777/78 during Mozart’s first extended tour without his father. The three quartets K. 285, 285a, 285b are undoubtedly among the most outstanding works in the genre. They share a lightsome, carefree quality with the typical shades of melancholy in the slow movements.

After their exciting interpretations of Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert, the Chiaroscuro Quartet now turns to Mozart’s Prussian Quartets, his last compositions for this formation. These quartets were written for Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and amateur cellist, and offer that instrument an unusually prominent role. The first of the three was composed fairly quickly, in June 1789, but the next two were not completed until the following year, and in the end Mozart’s plan for a set of six came to nothing.

Following a highly successful series of concerts in the summer of 2022, Francesca Dego, Timothy Ridout, Laura van der Heijden, and Federico Colli headed into the studio to record Mozart’s Piano Quartets. Whilst he may not have been the first composer to add a viola to the popular piano trio, Mozart was certainly the first to do so with such outstanding success. In his piano quartets, the strings become an equal partner to the piano, rather than mere accompaniment – much as in his piano concertos.

Boredom (in German: “long whiling”) is apparently what drove Wolfgang to compose one of his string quartets at the inn at Bolzano. And yes, he was doing well, as father Leopold assured Mozart’s mother in a letter dated 28 October 1772. How can we even imagine what boredom must have felt like for a 16-year-old genius? Was he sitting lackadaisically at the table with his father, scribbling counterpoint on paper and casually inventing the genre of Classical string quartet in passing? Or was Wolfgang just solving musical-logical Sudokus, as we all tend to do in such cases?

Dissonance Quartet – the name already contains the thrill of transgression. But a dissonance, in which the parts momentarily diverge from triadic harmony, is the necessary condition to achieve an aesthetic of four-part conflict, such as was sought after in the genre of classical string quartet. Mozart’s work in C Major with the “dissonance” epithet is the highlight of a group of six quartets in which he responded to the music of his colleague Joseph Haydn and the latter’s concept of discursive thematic work in a four-part texture.