Mozart: Flute Quartets

Chronique

Mozart's first quartet for flute and strings, the Flute Quartet in D major, K. 285, today as on the day it premiered, is a pleasant, tuneful work in a French style, premiered in the city of Mannheim during Mozart's travels. Mozart did not get along with the flutist who commissioned it, but there's little evidence of that in the fluent final product. It has been recorded less often than the two flute concertos, but there are still plenty of versions at all price ranges to choose from. What you get here from flutist Lisa Friend and the Brodsky Quartet are contemporary graphics and some of the less-often-recorded pieces. The latter group will be the biggest draw for lovers of Mozart. The Flute Quartet in A major, K. 298, is unique within his body of work. Written for friends, and originally given a fanciful set of tempo indications, the quartet riffs off of some opera tunes that were current in the mid-1780s (giving the lie to the piece's original 1770s dating). It's something of a varied opera potpourri, something Mozart did nowhere else. The Flute Quartet in C major, K. 285b, survives in one fragment that is indubitably by Mozart, leaving open, as with the Requiem, K. 626, how much of the rest he composed, and the Flute Quartet in G major, K. 285a, was a two-movement fragment unearthed by the broke Constanze Mozart after her husband's death. The final work on the album is an old arrangement of the slow movement of one of the flute concertos. None of it is essential stuff; nor do Friend and company contribute much that is distinctive to it. And Chandos imparts an oddly chilly feel to the usually reliable Potton Hall venue. Yet the album succeeds on two levels, which is more than you can say for most: it is an unfailingly sprightly hour of music, and it puts in the listener's hands an unusual corner of Mozart's output.

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