Mozart wrote that he put "long and arduous work" into his six string quartets dedicated to Haydn -- a rare statement from a composer who wrote easily and fluently. The dedication, perhaps, masked an effort by the upstart Viennese hotshot to outdo the already legendary veteran: Mozart's quartets have a nervous quality unusual in his music, combined with quite a complement of really striking effects. Played and heard properly, they're so intense to listen to that the usual single-disc grouping of three of the six quartets is ...
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Mozart wrote that he put "long and arduous work" into his six string quartets dedicated to Haydn -- a rare statement from a composer who wrote easily and fluently. The dedication, perhaps, masked an effort by the upstart Viennese hotshot to outdo the already legendary veteran: Mozart's quartets have a nervous quality unusual in his music, combined with quite a complement of really striking effects. Played and heard properly, they're so intense to listen to that the usual single-disc grouping of three of the six quartets is a bit of an ordeal; one of the many attractions of this disc by the Mozarteum Quartet of Salzburg is that two of the six quartets dedicated to Haydn are rounded out with an earlier and much lighter Mozart quartet, the String Quartet in G major, K. 80, the very first one he wrote. The Mozarteum Quartet captures the tension in the String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, and String Quartet in C major, K. 465 ("Dissonance"), perfectly without being melodramatic about it. The quartet avoids...
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