From their intense, contained sotto voce opening, broadly paced and eloquently phrased, the Hagen stress the melancholy fatalism of K421’s first movement. Whereas both the Alban Berg and the Quartetto Italiano bring a sense of restless aspiration to the F major second theme, the Hagen (1'14'') distil a forlorn, hesitant grace; and the imitative dialogues in the development (from 4'57'') have a spirit of elegiac resignation, with none of the agitation suggested in the rival versions, where the pervasive triplet figure remains more in the foreground. More than either of the other two groups, the Hagen make you realize how much of the movement is marked piano – though when called for they produce a robust and incisive forte, enhanced by the vivid character and definition of the cello line. The Andante is beautifully paced and coloured, flowing yet flexible, with a touch of sensuous languor in the central A flat episode, the quartet’s sole moment of true repose (from 3'27''). In keeping with today’s thinking, the Hagen take a more urgent view of the Minuet’s Allegretto than the Alban Berg or the Italiano, etching the dotted rhythms sharply. The main section gains particularly from the strength of the cello line, while the D major trio, delicately timed by the leader and held throughout to a whispered piano, has a remote, phantasmal air. The finale, too, is graphically characterized by the Hagen; the theme itself is given a more pronounced siciliano lilt than in the rival versions; and I particularly liked the way the viola variation (5'01'') emerges as a numbed, exhausted reaction to the frenetic syncopated activity of the preceding variation.
The Hagen’s refinement of ensemble and balance and unanimity of purpose are displayed to equal effect in the first of the so-called Prussian Quartets, K575. In the opening Allegretto their forte attack is sometimes a touch peremptory; but, like the Italiano, they flex the pulse tellingly at expressive cruxes, and beautifully dovetail the many instrumental solos. The Andante is more mobile and more intimately expressed than either the Alban Berg or the Italiano, the Minuet distinctly brisk and brittle, necessitating a marked gear-change for the trio. By contrast, much of the finale, in every sense the work’s climax, is unusually withdrawn and ruminative, with a typical sensitivity to harmonic flux and a subtle grace of interplay in the long stretches of polyphony.
While it would be rash to claim that the Hagen eclipse the finest readings of these quartets already available, including those discussed above, these beautifully recorded performances confirm their credentials as uncommonly thoughtful and sympathetic Mozartians.'