Luogo e data di registrazione		Alte Reitschule, Schloß Grafenegg (Austria) - 28 June / 1 July 1994
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineer		Stephan Schellmann (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Sony / Vivarte - SK 66 259 - (1 CD) - durata 62' 50" - (p) 1995 - DDD
	Cover Art		Park Schloß Schönbrunn, Wien by L. Janscha / J. Ziegler (1749-1812) - Photo: Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin
	Note		-

It seems to have been a string quintet by Michael Haydn that inspired Mozart to write his own String Quintet in B flat major K. 174 in 1773.An early exercise in style, it remained very much an exception at this time, with Mozart clearly preferring to flex his compositional muscles on the string quartet, in which he rose to the challenge of treating all the voices as equal partners within the musical argument. Not for another fourteen years did he return to the string quintet, but when he did so, it was to turn it into the spiritual heart of his instrumental œuvre and to turn out four great masterpieces that transformed the string quintet into the favoured medium of Mozart's late chamber style. The forces deployed in string quintets were still not fixed in the 1770s: while a number of composers experimented with two violins, two violas and double bass, others opted for three violins, viola and double bass. By the following decade, however, the instrumental combination was largely settled, at least in Vienna: while the Madrid-based Luigi Boccherini was busy writing quintets with two cellos (Boccherini himself played the cello and regularly performed with an existing quartet made up of court employees), Mozart decided in favour of two violins, two violas and cello. Mozart's own autograph “Verzeichnüß” sheds light on the genesis of his four late string quintets. The C major Quintet K. 515 was completed on April 19, I787, the G minor Quintet K. 516 on May 16 of the same year - both shortly before he began work on Don Giovanni. It is unclear, however, whether he wrote them in response to a particular commission. All that we can say for certain is that he offered them for sale by subscription in April 1788, “beautifully and correctly written”, but that demand seems to have been somewhat sluggish, since, two months later, he was obliged to delay publication in the hope that more subscribers would be found. Only a year previously, a Viennese contributor to Cramer`s Magazin der Musik had complained that Mozart's new string quartets were “too highly seasoned” and that the composer “aims too high in his artful and truly beautiful compositions”. Writers evidently still found it difficult to judge an art which, with all its mysteries and profundities, transcended the norms that were customary at this time. The opening movement of the C major String Quintet K. 515 is a particularly fine example of Mozart`s ability to use well-tried formulas in a highly original fashion. While the three middle voices fulfil the function of an accompaniment, the cello launches the work with a broken triad that is answered by the first violin. This formula is repeated two times and is followed by a fermata typical of Mozart's tendency to blur the expressive outlines, after which the two principal instruments exchange roles, with the theme now heard in a muted C minor. The thematic material is reworked in the development section, with Mozart even indulging in passages of two-part invertible counterpoint, while the recapitulation, in which the previously neglected subsidiary material is now allowed to assert itself, is no less notable for the density of its contrapuntal writing. When the C major Quintet was published for the first time by Artaria of Vienna in 1789, the introductory Allegro was followed by the Menuetto, an order suggested by analogy with that of the work's companion piece, K. 516. That the present recording follows this somewhat unusual ordering should need no justification. (Although the pagination of the autograph score reverses this order, with the Menuetto following the Andante; but its reliability is disputed by scholars.) The Menuetto pursues its shadowy course, with a Trio in F major in which, following a darkly chromatic passage, a ländler-like melody is able to soar aloft with all the greater freedom. Only now do we hear the Andante, which is domínated from first to last by a dialogue between first violin and viola, in the course of which the latter instrument gradually asserts its independence. The final movement is cast in the form of a sonata-rondo and allows the first violin to engage in flights of virtuosic fancy. Yet, for all its playful brio, the movement is equally notable for its finely detailed contrapuntal writing and for its use of the sort of motivic fragmentation associated with Joseph Haydn. The galant and academic styles are marvellously balanced here. In contrast to the hidden depths of the C major Quintet, the G minor String Quintet K. 516, although written only a few weeks later, is of almost disarming emotional directness. G minor is the key of the symphonies K. 183 and 550, of the Piano Quartet K. 478 and of Pamina's second-act aria from Die Zauberflöte, “Ach, ich fühl's, es ist verschwunden”, so that in the present case, too, the listener is bound to expect an equally personal statement on Mozart's part. Twelve days after he had completed the work, his father Leopold died in Salzburg after a long and painful illness. At a time when his thoughts must have been turning more than ever to the Grim Reaper, Mozart wrote a piece in whose opening movement the almost feverish, enervatingly beating quaver accompaniment refuses to be silenced. Tormenting hopelessness finds expression here. Even the second-subject group which, in defiance of all convention, opens in the tonic G minor provides for searing dissonances with its upward leap of a diminished ninth. The Allegro's fatalistic mood also affects the rugged Menuetto,while in the following Adagio in E flat major - an overcast con sordino movement - piercing anguish breaks through in the second subject in B flat minor. This second subject also provides the material for the expressively charged, slow introduction to the final movement, an Allegro in G major whose carefree 6/8-metre finally drives away the previous movements' darker world of minor tonalities. Whether or not we agree with Arnold Werner-Jensen that this final rondo is a “forceful act of self-emancipation”, there is no denying that its secrets are hard to uncover. Hans Christoph Worbs (Translation: © 1995 Stewart Spencer)