The Piano Quartets are like heavenly twins, alike on the outside but very different in tone. The G minor, like all Mozart’s works in that key, is intense, introspective and even tragic in places. The E flat is extrovert, bracing, brilliant and straightforwardly pleasurable. The present performances feature what, at first glance, is a strange […]

The first of Josef Suk’s two mature quartets, in B flat major, Op. 11, was partly written in Helsinki and Vienna hotels early in 1896, the last two movements being composed at home in Prague. The work which positively breathes romanticism, inevitably shows the influence of his beloved teacher and future father-in-law, Antonín Dvořák. By […]

After the wealth of string quartets produced by the composers of High Classicism – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert – the leading figures of Romanticism were somewhat daunted by the expectations of their public. Felix Mendelssohn achieved a respectable total of six quartets but the three notable composers represented in this program managed only nine […]

On 22 January 1785, Mozart’s father, Leopold, wrote from Salzburg to his daughter, Nannerl, retelling the news ‘that last Saturday (Wolfgang) performed his six quartets [in truth probably just KV 387, 421 and 428] for his dear friend Haydn and other good friends and that he has sold them to Artaria for a hundred ducats’. […]