MOZART. Piano Quartets Nos. 1 & 2. The Pro Arte Piano Quartet

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1 Eloq uence MOZART Piano Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 The Pro Arte Piano Quartet

2 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART ( ) Piano Quartet in G Minor, KV I Allegro II Andante III Rondo Allegro 7 26 Piano Quartet in E flat major, KV I Allegro II Larghetto III Allegretto 8 39 The Pro Arte Piano Quartet Lamar Crowson, piano Kenneth Sillito, violin Cecil Aronowitz, viola Terence Weil, cello Total timing: 46 48

3 The piano quartet, scored for solo keyboard with accompaniment for violin, viola and cello, was a comparatively late invention of the preclassical composers. Examples are known by Johann Schobert and John Christian Bach, both men for whose music Mozart had a special regard. But their works in this form were still tentative and certainly cannot compare with these two examples by Mozart for musical invention and sheer aesthetic beauty. Schobert and J.C. Bach could show Mozart the way but neither could have ever scaled his heights. Both men, like Mozart himself, were celebrated keyboard players, who wrote concertos for keyed instruments as well as their piano quartets, and there is no doubt that the Galante type of keyboard concerto, and especially the London type with its scaled-down, three-part string accompaniment for two fiddles and bass, was closely related to the piano quartet. And generally speaking there is a strong concertante element in the keyboard parts of piano quartets of all periods. Yet on the other hand, the formal layout of a piano quartet was essentially different from that of a piano concerto; both could be built on sonata form, but the piano quartet dispensed with the lengthy orchestral ritornelli which are such a marked feature of the classical type of concerto; in the piano quartet, sonata form could be used with little or no adaptation. Mozart wrote his first quartet for piano (or harpsichord) and strings in Vienna, in October 1785, apparently intending it to be the first of a published set, but it seemed so difficult that the publisher took fright and in the end Mozart only composed the two present examples. The first of these is in the same turbulent key of G minor as Mozart s 25th and 40th symphonies, a key which seems to have had a special significance for late eighteenth century composers in general and Mozart in particular. The G minor piano quartet is no exception to the general rule; it is sombre and dramatic in feeling. The first movement is dominated by a stern coup d archet theme, which the piano extends with a graceful downward scale. Mozart builds up most of his opening movement from the initial theme, even using it in place of a true second subject. The development is masterly, and introduces a new motive, which is in fact closely related to the first main subject; Mozart treats this in canon, before further stern references to the main subject bring in the recapitulation once more. At the end there is a coda, also based on the main subject. The elegiac slow movement, marked Andante, is in B flat, although there is a strong hint of G minor with the F sharp used in its very first bar. This movement is again in sonata form, of the modified kind often used for slow movements. The finale is a gracious rondo, in G major, from which all thought of trouble is brushed aside. Mozart s second piano quartet, in E flat, was composed the same year as Le nozze di Figaro was first produced The key is again one of special significance for Mozart; just as G minor was full of anguish and passion, so E flat conjured up the gentler, more romantic side of his nature dreaminess, but with more than a touch of nobility. The main subject of the first movement seems disappointing at first, not only lacking the obvious drama of the G minor, but also of rather equivocal character in itself, with the slow notes of the strings descending as the piano part ascends, a procedure already to be found in Schobert. The coup d archet type of subject, with its obvious and sharply-dotted rhythm appears again in this quartet, but as the second subject, not the first; it tends to thrust aside the dreamy first subject, and to dominate the movement. The slow movement is a gentle and tender Larghetto this is the side of Mozart that led his contemporaries to think of him as the composer of love-music par excellence. The finale is a gavotte-en-rondeau, with a rather lengthy episode in the minor and an effective coda. Charles Cudworth

4 The Pro Arte Piano Quartet PHOTO: TULLY POTTER COLLECTION THE PRO ARTE PIANO QUARTET MOZART: Piano Quartets BRAHMS: Piano Quartet No. 3 SCHUMANN: Piano Quartet Recordings: 1965 Cover image: Rembrandt, The Abduction of Europa detail (1632, oil on oak panel) Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-Homji Art direction: Chilu FAURÉ: Piano Quartet No. 1 Piano Trio

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