Mozart - Piano Quartets

THE MOZARTEAN PLAYERS

Steven Lubin - fortepiano
Stanley Ritchie - classical violin
Myron Lutzke - classical violoncello
David Miller - classical viola

Harmonia Mundi HCX 3957018

Eac / Ape (img+cue+log) / Mp3 (lame vbr --alt preset)
Total playing time: 64:11
Covers & booklet included (scan @ 300dpi)

Recording:
December 1989, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York

CD release:
1990, 2004

Info:
Mozart's two piano quartets were written in his middle Vienna years, during the enormously fertile period of the genesis of Figaro. He wrote them within nine months of each other: the G-minor Quartet (K.478) was completed on 16 October 1785, according to the autograph, and the E-flat-major Quartet (K.493) on 3 June 1786, according to Mozart's catalogue of his own works (no autograph for the second quartet survives).
The two piano quartets exhibit remarkable formal and stylistic similarities, which attests yet again to Mozart's tendency to tailor works in each genre according to patterns he deemed appropriate to each. The piano quartets are three-movement works like the sonatas and trios, and so make a more intimate impression than the larger chamber works with minuets, like the string quartets and quintets. Yet, many details give the piano quartets a high specific gravity that sets them apart from the smaller chamber works: the elaborate first movements, with complex contrapuntal developments and codas, implying mandatory second repeats; the deeply serious slow movements; and the highly evolved alla breve rondos characteristic of the mature Mozart. The E-flat-major Rondo in particular — with its gavotte-like half-bar upbeat, full-fledged development, and exhilarating coda — ranks with Mozart's greatest examples of the form.

Track listing:
1. Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K.493 - 1. Allegro
2. Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K.493 - 2. Larghetto
3. Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K.493 - 3. Allegretto
4. Piano Quartet in G minor, K.478 - 1. Allegro
5. Piano Quartet in G minor, K.478 - 2. Andante
6. Piano Quartet in G minor, K.478 - 3. Rondo

Reviews:
Gramophone:
These are affectionate and musically very aware accounts of two beautiful works. Steven Lubin's piano, built by R. J. Regier after a Walter instrument (the make Mozart used) of about 1785, is—at least as captured on this recording—softer in tone and milder in attack than most fortepianos of the period that I have heard, and this helps impart an unusual warmth to the performances, which is further enhanced by the quite exceptional smoothness and sweetness, not to say the graceful phrasing, of Stanley Ritchie's playing on his period violin and the gentle resonance of Myron Lutzke's cello.

The players' readiness of response to the music is unmistakeable, and it gives rise to many felicities—in, for example, the long lines of the first movement of K493 or the alert detail in the K478 Andante. Sometimes, however, it seems to lead to performances that do not quite come fully to grips with the music, through the softening of climaxes or, perhaps particularly, the loss of momentum. Steven Lubin makes a good deal of rubato, which sometimes sounds slightly mannered and is not always done in the Mozartian way (that is, as Mozart himself specified, within a strict pulse). In the finale of K493, for example, the music doesn't often really seem to get going, and when it does it soon relaxes again; this applies especially in the dialogue passages, where Lubin's anxiety to illuminate each phrase is apt to be self-defeating. He also has a tendency to spread or roll chords to make an expressive point, more often than to some listeners might seem tasteful. There are a lot of tiny hesitations to make musical points, again perhaps more than desirable in the interest of sustaining the momentum of a movement. One senses a certain impetuosity in his playing and some want of discipline and control in his handling of rhythm from time to time.

These performances are, however, alternatives well worth considering to the Archiv Produktion disc by Malcolm Bilson and his English Baroque Soloists colleagues, the richer and better recorded of the existing versions. Bilson's tempos tend to be on the deliberate side, and these are serious, large-scale readings; the Mozartean Players' performances are more relaxed—though, I should add, not without strong and powerful things (listen for example to the development of the first movement of the G minor work). My preference remains with the Bilson version, but anyone looking for rather gentler performances, which perhaps make more of the individual, passing beauties of these works as opposed to their breadth and grandeur, will find much to enjoy in this new issue.'


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