Mozart: Flute Quartet No. 1 in D major, K285

“This is a performance that can stand as a benchmark” BBC Music Magazine

“The Sheffield-based Ensemble 360 – a flexible group of up to 11 players – have been drawing enthusiastic audiences with their informal and inventive concerts, often in offbeat venues. As this attractively planned debut CD confirms, their playing is fresh and lively, free from any whiff of bland routine. The Flute Quartet, offered as an aperitif, is blithe and impish in its outer movements, delicately, coolly wistful in the Watteau-esque Adagio.
In the miraculous Piano and Wind Quintet, Ensemble 360 phrase imaginatively, delight in their quick-witted repartee, and handle the ever-shifting balances with care and finesse.
Ensemble 360 are marvellously vivid in the finale, here less gracious, more playful than usual, with the main theme's contrasts of forte and piano piquantly realised.
The unfinished Adagio, K580a, opening uncannily like the motet Ave verum corpus, was probably intended for clarinet and three bassethorns, though it sounds well enough in this (anonymous) completed version for cor anglais and strings. Best of all here is the Clarinet Quintet, performed by Matthew Hunt on the basset clarinet, with its treacly extra low notes displayed to pungent effect in, say, the Ländler-like second Trio of the Minuet. With its briskish speeds, this won't necessarily please those who like to have the Quintet's autumnal associations underlined. But the performance has a natural flow and grace allied to many sensitive touches of colour and timing. Especially appealing are the fire and tension of the first-movement development, the easy lilt of the Minuet (wittily embellished on its final repeat) and the finale's gleeful sense of fun, stilled in the haunting A minor variation, where the solo viola makes delicately expressive use of portamento. The rollicking send-off sets the seal on a touching and thoroughly delightful performance.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“There may be only one movement of any emotional weight, the B minor Adagio of the First Quartet, K285, but in that brief cantilena Pahud finds a mystery and subtlety of dynamic shading that outshine almost any rival. For the rest he consistently conveys the fun in the writing here.
The A major work may run the dangerous course of parodying the banalities of the contemporaries whom Mozart despised, but Pahud still finds charm in the invention, helped by the warm, imaginative playing of his string partners.
Pahud's lighter, more sparkling playing, with his fresh, clear tone is preferable to Galway's more Romantic approach at generally broader speeds, and with phrasing more heavily underlined in characteristically full flute tone. Pahud also observes second-half repeats as well as first in the sonata-form first movements of the first three quartets. Recommended.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010