The Ysaye Quartet, founded in 1984, are made up of musicians who studied at the Paris Conservatoire and then went on to work with the Amadeus Quartet at the Cologne Hochschule. They are grant-aided by the French Ministry of Culture and last year they won the Grand Prix at the Evian International String Quartet Competition. This is a good pedigree, and certainly their playing has character and emotional commitment as well as technical resource.
But I have found this a disappointing issue. Their idea of what Mozart meant by allegro in the first movement of the D minor Quartet is different from that of any other ensemble I have heard in this music. One presumes they are aiming to draw every profundity from this admittedly intense music, but I cannot believe that a laboured pace and contrapuntal exchange are the way to do it and the first subject is anything but sotto voce. Similarly, the andante that follows is not at ''a walking pace'' if we understand that Mozart applied that adjective to its dotted crotchet beat (in 6/8 time), the dynamics are often at variance with the Eulenburg edition and the little group of three semiquavers that is a feature of its theme is commonly misaccented with the first of them carrying emphasis. The minuet is another deliberate affair, even its major-mode trio section failing to dance, though here the first violinist gives us the right tonal charm and the variation-form finale is more non troppo than allegretto, fails to open piano and sounds as if each of its bars were two of triple time rather than one of compound duple. It then slows further, so that the final piu allegro variation is not much faster than the start. All in all, there are other versions of this famous quartet that are preferable to this self-conscious account. The recording is reverberant but faithful.
The G minor Quintet is more satisfactory, for here the Ysaye Quartet and their guest violist Hatto Beyerle have a better interpretative focus, and (though the adagio start to the finale is measured at 3'15'' compared to the Melos Quartet's 2'53'' on DG) tempos are more in line with what allows the music to speak naturally. But their playing of this tragic masterpiece is not really compelling and comparison with the well recorded Melos finds the German ensemble more refined yet at the same time more tensely eloquent in each of the four movements. For most collectors their coupling of the C major Quintet—another big work (in every sense) and one that Mozart created as a companion piece—seems to make better sense. The DG issue is generous too at some 70 minutes playing time.'