Sonnerie go one – rather a large one – better than their recorded rivals in the Mozart piano quartets by including an extra work: the piano quartet arrangement (not generally thought to be Mozart’s own, but more or less contemporary) of the Quintet for piano and wind. The work, so artfully composed around the sound and capacities of the oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn (there’s a fascinating Tovey essay on this), loses the motivation for its particular thematic structure in transcription but is nevertheless a worthwhile bonus.
Not that these performances need any bonus. They have exceptional musical vitality, as though the music is being freshly thought through as it unfolds and the players are newly fired by its ideas. The G minor Quartet in particular is given a large-scale, outspoken performance, vigorous, dark-toned in the first movement, with an almost alarmingly vivid and strongly shaped account of the development section. There is drama in the Andante, too, which is expansively done, and I was impressed in the finale by the rich implications the players (pianist Gary Cooper most of all) drew from the textures and the harmonies. The finale of the E flat work, too, is done with great spirit – here the pianist is very much in the driving seat – and there are many happy details of timing and dynamic gradation.
Mozart’s wit is beautifully captured in K493, yet this is a deeply serious performance, strongly argued, with the mystery and logic of his unusual modulations fully grasped. The first movement here, taken at a rather steady tempo, is particularly successful, with Cooper taking his time over the expression of its ideas and Monica Huggett and her colleagues playing the lyrical secondary material with much warmth.
I feel bound to mention the oddity of the cadenza that Cooper introduces in the G minor finale, but within performances on this level, and in the light of the passion that clearly informs it, I can hardly take exception