Luogo e data di registrazione		La-Chaux-de-Fonds (Svizzera) - 11-14 novembre 1970
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Vittorio Negri
	Edizione LP		Philips | 412 398-1 | 1 LP
	Prima Edizione CD		Vedi link alla prima edizione in long playing.
	Note		La collana "Musica da Camera" della Philips riedita negli anni '80 alcune registrazioni del Quartetto Italiano.

Mozart wrote his first quartet, K. 80 in G (in original three movement form) on March 15, 1770, when he was just 14 and staying in Lodi with his father during the course of his first "prodigy" tour of Italy. The style of the music suggests strongly the influence of Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1698-1775), and conforms to the three-movement pattern (ending with a minuet-finale) of similar works by Sammartini and his colleagues that Mozart would have come to know while he was in Milan. The first movement is a delicate Adagio, the second a busy sonata-form Allegro with a "learned," quasi-contrapuntal development, and the third a gentle minuet with a forthright trio (in C) that Leopold Mozart "corrected" by transposing the first and second violin parts down an octave. The more assured style of the concluding gavotte-like Rondeau (which also has a "learned" minore episode and a coda) indicates that it was added later, perhaps in 1773 or 1774. The six so-called "Milanese" Quartets, K. 155-160 were writen in quick succession during Mozart's third and last transalpine tour, between October 1772 and March 1773; indeed, the first of them, K. 155 in D, may well have been composed en route from Salzburg to Milan, since Leopold Mozart wrote home from Bozen (Bolzano) to his wife in Salzburg on October 28, 1772, saying "Wolfgang is well too, and at the moment is writing a quartet to while away the time." Like all five of its companions, it is in three movements and, like Haydn's earliest quartets, not far removed from the spirit of the divertimento, yet there is unmistakable evidence of an instinct for true chamber music. Its first movement is notable for the brilliance of its first violin part (and occasionally of the viola part as well), for its momentary shifts into minor keys, and for its substantially varied recapitulation. The second movement is an Andate in A, and the third a short, slightly Haydnish rondo, with a brief minor episode. K. 156 in G begins with a movement that is marked Presto but has an almost waltz-like lilt (and a remarkable "development" that bears little relation to anything stated in the exposition). The second movement is a striking Adagio in E minor, for which a much more rudimentary sketch has survived, showing less adventurous use of the viola and cello. The quartet ends with a minuet (and a trio in G minor) full of imitative patterns. K. 157 in C starts with a confident, expansive movement that seems to look forward to the initial Allegro of the Piano Concerto in D, K. 537, of 1788. This is followed by a sombre Andante in C minor, whose lilting 6/8 suggests the influence of the siciliano, although the characteristic dotted rhythm is missing, and by a breezy rondo, whose refrain, with its prominent syncopations is thrown into relief by two well contrasted episodes. Robin Golding

Illustration: Anton Balzer (1771-1807) "Ansicht der Stadt Salzburg vom Kapuzinerberg", coloured engraving (Salzburger Museum Carolino Augusteum)