Mozart’s two piano quartets were groundbreaking when they were written in the early 1780s. The addition of viola to the standard piano-trio texture opens up new sonorities, and the writing revels in new possibilities regarding the relationship between strings and keyboard. So should we think of them as extended piano trios or compact piano concertos? This new recording provides material with which to argue either way.
The lineup is something of a supergroup of rising soloists - the violinist Francesca Dego, violist Timothy Ridout, cellist Laura van der Heijden and pianist Federico Colli. Together they are as balanced a team as one could ask for, Ridout’s viola singing out as warmly and almost as brightly as Dego’s violin so that their exchanges are ideally weighted. The playing is imaginative and detailed; repeated sections are never done the same way twice, and the four play off each other in adding the odd ornament or decoration. There’s no real star: this is real chamber music. And yet, first among equals, Colli’s piano is the centre of gravity, setting the tone with quiet grace when he’s foregrounded, and sounding characterful and eloquent even when he’s in the background; he never has to push his way through.
The G minor quartet, K478, gets a performance of considerable scope, its fierce opening soon giving way to something lighter, almost playful, but with weightier passages to come: in the overlapping long notes and harmonic wrangling before the return of the main theme the strings take on a thick, almost organ-like tone. The E flat major quartet, K493, brings a first movement that sounds gentle here rather than propulsive, though it never drags. Throughout, the overall tone is one of considered elegance – almost too considered, as just occasionally one almost wishes they would play thoughtlessly for a moment and let the music power itself to its next destination. But this is chamber-music playing that really has something to say, and it’s never complacent.
This week’s other pick
The new release from pianist Anna Khomichko on the Genuin label, entitled Mozart and His Europe, sets three of his piano works including the B flat Sonata K333 in the context of some engaging pieces by his British- and German-based contemporaries Muzio Clementi and the Bach brothers, Johann Christian and Carl Philipp Emanuel. All are played on a modern Steinway, and all are enlivened by Khomichko’s crisp, clear touch.
