Arcanto Quartett, Jorg Widmann – Mozart: Clarinet Quintet K581 & String Quartet K421 (2013) [Qobuz FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

(W.A. Mozart) Arcanto Quartett, Jorg Widmann – Clarinet Quintet K581 & String Quartet K421 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:43 minutes | 1,08 GB
Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz.com | Digital booklet

We owe these two masterpieces to the musical friendships Mozart made during his years in Vienna. The celestial beauties of the Quintet K581 were tailor-made for the great clarinettist Anton Stadler, while the Quartet K421, more severe in tone, is one of the six Mozart dedicated to his ‘caro amico’ Joseph Haydn. Here then is the ideal programme for the four friends of the Arcanto Quartett to show their affinities with the Mozartian repertoire.

The Arcanto Quartet, composed of young European players, has gained attention on both sides of the Atlantic, and there’s no disputing the talent of the ensemble. This release of chamber music by Mozart is beautifully recorded at the Teldex Studios in Berlin, and the engineering captures a great deal of detail in the playing. It may be that there’s too much detail, and that’s for the individual listener to decide. This is the kind of particularizing, atomizing performance that will entrance certain analytical minds and leave other listeners cold. The performances are adept at catching motivic detail and certain aspects of Mozart’s use of register that very few other performances have explored. It will come as no surprise that this quartet sometimes performs the chamber music of Anton Webern in concert, for they have a way of making Mozart sound a bit like him. Emotional expression is scrupulously minimized. The slow movement in the Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, is given a rather courtly performance that avoids lyricism, and accepting the plain opening movement of the String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, or the minor variation in the finale of the Clarinet Quintet, here requires setting aside the considerable role that overtly dramatic expression played in the music of the Classical period. But again, the Minuet of K. 421 is magical, with its Trio rendered with unbelievable delicacy and contrasting nicely with the Minuet sections, which are as agitated as this quartet gets. On balance, your reaction to this is purely dependent on taste, but it’s the kind of recording that’s worth hearing on the basis of originality alone. The album’s “friendship” theme is unconvincing; Mozart’s friendship with Haydn was of an entirely different sort than the one with the clarinetist Anton Stadler.

Tracklist:
01 – Clarinet Quintet in A Major K581 – I.Allegro
02 – Clarinet Quintet in A Major K581 – II.Larghetto
03 – Clarinet Quintet in A Major K581 – III.Menuetto
04 – Clarinet Quintet in A Major K581 – IV.Allegretto con Variazioni
05 – String Quartet in D Minor K421 – I.Allegro moderato
06 – String Quartet in D Minor K421 – II.Andante
07 – String Quartet in D Minor K421 – III.Menuetto
08 – String Quartet in D Minor K421 – IV.Allegretto ma non troppo

Jörg Widmann – clarinet
Arcanto Quartett:
Antje Weithaas – violin
Daniel Sepec – violin
Tabea Zimmermann – viola
Jean-Guihen Queyras – cello

Download:

mqs.link_ArcantQuartettJrgWidmannMzart.ClarinetQuintetK581StringQuartetK4212013Qbuz2496.part1.rar
mqs.link_ArcantQuartettJrgWidmannMzart.ClarinetQuintetK581StringQuartetK4212013Qbuz2496.part2.rar