Petersen Quartett - Mozart: 6 String Quartets ("Haydn-Quartette") (1992)

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Petersen Quartett - Mozart: 6 String Quartets ("Haydn-Quartette") (1992)

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Written between December 1782 and January 1785 the set of six string quartets which Mozart dedicated to Haydn are striking masterpieces, and that he meant them to be so is clear from the printed dedication to his older colleague. ''Dearest friend and famous man,'' he wrote, ''here are… these six sons of mine. They are the fruit of long and laborious effort. One thing has a little encouraged and comforted me: the hope, flatteringly whispered to me, that these musical works might one day be a joy to me… I therefore commend my children to you, hoping that they will not seem totally unworthy of your love.'' Furthermore, Mozart's choice of the medium seems appropriate since he and Haydn had on occasion played together as members of a string quartet, and both surely thought of it as a more refined vehicle for musical thought than the symphony orchestra.
The name of the Petersen Quartet was new to me, but the booklet tells us that the players met in Berlin and that their ensemble dates from 1979. They have taken on a formidable challenge in these works, and I am not sure that they are yet ready to do them full justice. Listening to the opening of K387, one can admire the vigour and fluency of the playing, but I am less happy about the tonal pushes and instability of tempo, to say nothing of the touch of roughness in the sound which is exacerbated by a somewhat edgy recording. This playing is often youthfully exuberant, but I miss that refinement, ripeness and interpretative maturity that match the maturity of utterance of the quartets themselves. This is particularly noticeable in some of the slow movements, where one feels that the notes are neatly played but that their deeper poetry remains unrealized (try that of K428 for an example of this). The mysterious attribute of great music that Britten liked to call ''magic'' is in short supply.
Even so, these are good players and it would be wrong to write the performance off as not worth hearing. My feeling, too, is that they improve somewhat as one goes through the three discs. Maybe the G major Quartet is one that the Petersen are a little less at ease with, although its finale is one of many movements out of the 24 here which show these artists to be an expert team. Yet to my mind, their accounts of these quartets remains only patchily successful in conveying that special depth and radiance which are characteristic of them and can make for performances to cherish.
Mozart's very subtle wit can also be better conveyed; for example, at the end of the finale just mentioned, which suddenly goes quiet and in that respect is Haydnesque; it needs more careful pointing to work properly. There's more fun in the finale of K428 and the first movement of the Hunt than we hear here, and sometimes minuets, too, could smile more; that of the Hunt is a case in point. On the other hand, at the beginning of the D minor Quartet the Petersen observe the important marking of sotto voce better than some other ensembles, including the rightly praised Quartetto Italiano on Philips (available as part of an eight-disc set—422 512-2PME8, 8/91); and they capture the unease in the Andante that follows. Indeed, this work shows them at their best, and its overall sombreness is rightly lightened by the first violin's elegant swoops over pizzicato in the trio of the minuet—a passage that is notably well played. Yet the blend of sunlight and shadow in K464 eludes them (the playing has some inappropriate strenuousness) and the famous, mysterious slow introduction to the Dissonance Quartet fails to cast a spell, partly because the tone is too vibrantly projected.

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Petersen Quartett - Mozart: 6 String Quartets ("Haydn-Quartette") (1992)

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