Mozart: Quintet for Piano and Winds in E flat, K452

Mozart’s contribution to the repertoire of music with wind instruments is of considerable significance. Not only did he write concertos for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn, but he also made frequent use of these instruments in his chamber music. His interest in varied textures and colours led to unusual, sometimes unique, combinations of wind or wind and strings, and many of these works have become cornerstones of the repertoire.

This historically significant recording includes a single movement from a quintet never completed by Mozart before his death. It was one of only a handful of works singled out for by his wife Constanze for particular attention, whilst documenting his other fragments. The Horn Quintet was written for Joseph Leutgeb, a long-standing friend for whom Mozart also composed the four horn concertos, and shows an obvious affection for the instrument and its practitioner.

The Quartet, K370, contains a particularly lovely Adagio, only 37 bars long, but deeply expressive, and the final work here, K452 was considered by the composer himself to be the best work he had produced.

These important works could not be in more talented hands than those of The Gaudier Ensemble, who effervesce outstanding playing throughout in performances that Mozart himself would surely have been proud of. A recording to be relished with the CD player firmly on ‘continuous play’!

Recording location: Sofiensaal, Vienna, Austria, October 1956 (KV 498, 452), June 1957 (Beethoven), September 1962 (M. Haydn), October 1963 (KV 581), October 1964 (KV 99)

This recording forms part of a series of 10 reissues celebrating the glorious Decca recordings from the 1950s-1970s of the Wiener Oktett (Vienna Octet), made up of key principals from the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Five titles were released in September and the remaining five are released this month.

Receiving their first international release on CD are the Mozart Clarinet Trio, his Cassation (written when the composer was a mere thirteen!), and the piano-and-wind Quintets of Mozart and Beethoven. The ‘soloists’ within the chamber ensemble – if, as such, one might identify them – are one of the Vienna Octet’s founders, Alfred Boskovsky, and the Octet’s ‘house’ pianist, Walter Panhofer. The mellow writing for the clarinet in both the Mozart Quintets was inspired by the playing of Anton Stadler. This anthology is also unique in that it affords us the only recording on which Willi Boskovsky played the viola – in the ‘Kegelstatt’ Trio. Concluding this anthology is the delightful G major Divertimento by Michael Haydn (Joseph’s younger brother). Found in the British Museum and edited by the Vienna Octet’s bassist, it was often used by the group as a concert opener.

The cheapest, most attractively presented and most comprehensive single disc (78 minutes) of Dennis Brain in today’s market.

Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Dittersdorf, Dukas and an excerpt from the Hoffnung Music Festival, 1956.

Newly re-mastered.

‘He was innately musical in a way which defies description or analysis. He shaped phrases with an instinctive rightness that seemed inevitable. Technical problems did not exist for him. He had tamed the most notoriously intractable of all instruments to be his obedient servant and raised it again to sing the song the sirens sang.’ Walter Legge

On this disc one of the world’s finest pianists encounters one of the world’s greatest wind quintets, performing two very special works: Mozart’s and Beethoven’s quintets for piano and winds. The unusual scoring has led these works to be performed less often than they deserve: indeed, in 1784 Mozart wrote about his work to his father Leopold stating ‘I myself consider it to be the best thing I have ever written’. Twelve years later, Beethoven composed his Quintet, which he also arranged for the standard piano quartet combination. Beethoven must have been familiar with Mozart’s work: the choice of the same key and the same formal structure (down to small details) cannot be purely coincidental.