Mozart at Midyear: Rewards of Recycling

Those of us who had heard of Mozart before the time the hype mills starting grinding for ‘91, even before Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” expected quantity but little that was new and startling in terms of recorded repertory during this celebratory year.

More important, and at least a possibility, was that past glories would be be resurrected, particularly in the realm of chamber music. Fondest hopes have been realized.

The Mozart chamber music news of the half-year is the CD reissue of the last 10 string quartets recorded by the Alban Berg Quartet of Vienna between 1976 and 1979 (Teldec 72480, four mid-priced CDs).

The package arrives, conveniently for the reviewer, at the same time as new versions of the same works by nominally the same group--the Berg’s second violinist and violist have, in fact, changed in the interim--for EMI/Angel, where they appear on five full-priced, individual CDs.

Without the Teldec set as guidepost it would be difficult to fault the new releases. No one, to the best of my knowledge, can approach the Berg Quartet, yesterday’s or today’s, in matters of elegance, drama and rhythmic dash in this wonderfully elusive music.

Technically, the Bergs have been atop the heap since their inception. In the EMI/Angel recordings we’re perhaps too aware of this.

There is a certain impatience, particularly in first violinist Gunther Pichler’s execution, which betrays lack of challenge--rather as if he wishes he were tackling Lutoslawski, or at least Brahms, instead. Tempos tend to be marginally rushed nowadays and rhythms clipped, with some hardness of tone. Where one can sigh along with Mozart on Teldec--say, the sublime variations of the still undervalued A-major Quartet, K. 464, or the subtle dynamic variations and rhythmic hesitations of the opening movement of K. 499--Berg/EMI tends to skate over such delicate flash points.

Then too the EMIs, as full-priced CDs, are a good deal more expensive.

In Mozart’s brief life, everything was compressed. Unlike the string quartets of Haydn and Beethoven, which are threaded throughout their careers, Mozart’s early quartets--K. 80 through K. 173, written from ages 13 through 17--are separated by a seeming lifetime of experience from the succession of marvels that begins with K. 387 (written in 1782, when the composer was 25) and stretches through a series of ever more refined and abstract creations to the aloof perfection of K. 590, written in 1790.

One can get the whole picture, after a fashion, from the sole integral set of Mozart’s 23 quartets currently on the market. They were recorded by the Quartetto Italiano between 1967 and 1973 and are currently circulating on eight mid-priced CDs (422 512) in Philips’ Complete Mozart Edition.

The Quartetto, whose playing was rarely more than workmanlike and often dramatically underpowered, was an anomaly: a string quartet whose violist and cellist project more character and mechanical security than its violinists.

The set, once at least helpful, becomes expendable by virtue not only of the Berg’s double-barreled competition and the budget reissue of the Juilliard Quartet’s erratic but decidedly major-league interpretations of the six quartets Mozart dedicated to Haydn (Odyssey 45826, three budget CDs), but also by a newly arrived set of the 13 early quartets from the period-instrument Festetics Quartet (Hungaroton 31443/45, three CDs).

What matters here, more than stylistic authenticity or their instruments’ ages and configurations, is that these Hungarian players have lived with the music, too often dismissed as mere warm-ups for the later masterpieces, and brought it affectionately, brilliantly to life.

The Festetics--which, by the way, is recording all the Haydn quartets for the upstart Hungarian Quintana label--is the accurate, firm-toned and committed period quartet we’ve been waiting for. But do we really need the cathedral acoustics both Hungaroton and Quintana deem appropriate to such intimate, bright-toned music?

The Mozart chamber buff usually counters any discussion of the quartets by trumpeting the glories of the string quintets, at least the three--K. 515, K. 516 and K. 593--that are the connoisseurs’ delights.

And for a perfectly crafted, infinitely rewarding edition of the string quintets--there are six in all--the listener, veteran or neophyte, need go no farther than the 1974 edition by the more or less ad-hoc ensemble led by violinist Arthur Grumiaux, once more available and a principal adornment of the Philips Complete Mozart Edition (422 511, three mid-priced CDs),

Grumiaux and colleagues may not offer “style” in the scholarly sense--not even trills taken from the top note--but for beauty of tone, for the feel of Mozart, for his aching lyricism and dashing wit, this is the real thing.