THE INTIMATE MOZART

In 1942, after an unsuccessful three-year attempt to obtain the Swiss work permit that would allow him to work as a conductor, a young Jewish refugee from Hungary entered and won the Gold Medal of the Geneva Concours--the most prestigious competition for pianists in what was then a small, exclusive field.

Shortly thereafter, having Germanicized his name from Gyorgy to Georg--last name Solti--he teamed with violinist Georg Kulenkampff for a program of Mozart duo-sonatas on the Decca label (London in this country).

Forty-five years later, and for the same label, comes Solti’s second commercial recording as a pianist. The composer is again Mozart: the two great Piano Quartets, in G minor, K. 478, and E flat, K. 493, in which Sir Georg is joined by members of the Melos Quartet of Stuttgart (London 417 190, LP or CD).

No suggestion here of Solti the excitable conductor, with his penchant for fast tempos, terse inflections and stabbing sforzandi . Rather, a contemplative, commanding pianist who, with like-minded collaborators, projects a serious, rather stately Mozart, even in the friskiest portions of K. 493.

Impressive stuff, but there’s more fun in the fleet-fingered versions of these works by pianist Andre Previn and the Vienna Musikverein Quartet, also on London but in LP format only, if available at all.

Radu Lupu provides a particularly satisfying, stylish account of the Piano Quintet in E- flat, K. 452, in which he is joined by a first-rate wind ensemble comprising oboist Han de Vries, clarinetist George Pieterson, hornist Vicente Zarzo and bassoonist Brian Pollard (London 414 291, LP or CD). Lupu is one of the rare virtuosos of the modern piano willing to embellish the bare bones of Mozart’s printed page, and he does so with a flair and tactfulness that make his enhancing little additions--trills, runs, a few notes in the bass--sound as if they had been written in Mozart’s own hand.

The coupling is, as usual, Beethoven’s cheerful, lightweight quintet in the same key.

The members of Berlin’s Philharmonia Quartet and three of their colleagues in the Berlin Philharmonic are heard in clean-limbed, witty and brightly paced interpretations of the two most substantial of Mozart’s divertimentos for strings and two horns: No. 15 in B-flat, K. 287 (Denon 1057, CD) and No. 17 in D, K. 334 (Denon 7080, CD). In each instance, the coupling is a smaller, earlier divertimento: K. 137 with K. 287, K. 136 with K. 334.

In K. 287 and K. 334, there is strong CD competition from the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble (Philips 412 740 and 411 102, respectively). But the German players are a more relaxed, jovial lot and Denon’s crisp, intimate recorded sound is preferable to Philips’ more distant, boomy sonics.

David Shifrin, principal clarinetist of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, enters a crowded CD field with his ideas on the subject of Mozart’s Quintet in A, K. 581 (Delos 3020, CD), which he plays with the sort of edgeless, velvety tone suited to Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet. Indeed, the undulant, moonstruck interpretation by Shifrin and his supersuave colleagues of Chamber Music Northwest has mid-19th Century written all over it. Of Mozartean spiritedness there’s barely a trace.

With conductor Gerard Schwarz stylishly propelling him and New York’s Mostly Mozart Orchestra, Shifrin proves a far more convincing--and no less handsome-sounding--performer in the inevitable coupling, the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, in its appealingly dusky, extended-range original version for the instrument generally called the “basset clarinet.”

The late Benny Goodman had no problems with an overly beautiful tone, as witness a “historical” reissue that pairs the same works in their standard editions (RCA 5275, CD). The breathlessly paced Quintet, recorded in 1938, teams him with an untidy, obviously out-of-sorts Budapest Quartet, while he is slickly accompanied in the Concerto (recorded 1957) by the Boston Symphony under Charles Munch. Either way, in either year, the Goodman tone is raw and monochromatic, the technique labored.