Mozart: Piano Quartets

Album review

Comparatively rare among chamber combinations and seldom handled with ease by composers, the piano quartet's lopsided format presents difficulties that piano trios and quintets, with their tested stability, do not. The small repertoire of works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Schumann, and Dvorák shows that this was a genre of limited interest, considerable frustration, and mixed results. Mozart's two piano quartets, however, are held as exemplars, for his solutions to the ensemble's unique problems of balance and cohesion are convincing and elegant. The players' roles shift constantly, each taking turns as the dominant part; the counterpoint is consistent and inventive, always maintaining a tension that interlocks the trio with the piano; and the pieces are as strongly characterized and richly developed as any of Mozart's other great chamber works. The Mozartean Players perform on pianoforte and period string instruments, and their tuning is a little lower than one hears on modern instruments. However, this lends warmth to the Piano Quartet No. 2 in E flat and a deeper sense of pathos to the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor. Both pieces are skillfully played, with a conversational tone appropriate to Mozart's intentions. Classical Express provides exceptional sound and the budget price is hard to beat.
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