Saturday 23 August 2008

150. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Quartet in E flat major (1786)


















Recording


Title: Piano Quartet in G minor K478; Piano Quartet in E flat K493
Performers: Paul Lewis, Leopold String Trio
Year: 2002
Length: 34 minutes

Review

By its nature the piano quartet has a more intimate feel than the piano concerto, somewhere between the violin sonata and the concerto, and is is quite a pretty thing. This is not as spectacular as any of the Mozart Concertos, but Mozart had a lot more practice with the concertos, he only wrote two of these.

This is quite a long quartet, slightly longer than any of his Piano Concertos, again the comparisons are appropriate, this is very much a concerto for four instruments, the piano part is the dominant one and the trio does the same job as the orchestra.

The more intimate feel of the four instruments makes the whole thing feel more delicate than epic, and in that sense it works extremely well in the slow movement, a very beautiful moment.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Mozart received a commission for three quartets in 1785 from the publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister. Hoffmeister thought the G minor Quartet was too difficult and that the public would not buy it, so he released Mozart from the obligation of completing the set. Nine months later, Mozart composed this quartet anyway.

The Larghetto:

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