The Amadeus Quartet and Cecil Aronowitz were a famous ensemble in Mozart's six string quintets, and this issue is a valuable reminder of their achievement. Nevertheless, the earliest recording here (not first issued until 1975), that of the B flat major Quintet, shows its age of nearly three decades all too clearly with scrawny and uningratiating sound; surprisingly, this is most audible in the gentler and more lyrical music of the Adagio, but nothing here is really enjoyable from this point of view and even the playing seems more robust and fluent than distinguished.
The other work on the first disc of this set is the C major Quintet, K515, which is a mature masterpiece, but here, too, I find the approach to the initial Allegro over-brisk, played in a no-nonsense manner of more energy than charm and so failing to realize the expressive depth of the music. The Grumiaux Trio with Arpad Gerecz and Max Lesueur (Philips) could not be more different in this movement which, incidentally, is one of the biggest sonata Allegros Mozart ever wrote: they take 4'15'' over the exposition as against the Amadeus/Aronowitz timing of 3'43'' and then play the marked repeat which the DG set omits, giving an overall timing of 14'26'' compared to the 9'05'' taken by the Amadeus and Aronowitz. Indeed, with the fine tone, grace, and intelligent phrasing that Arthur Grumiaux and his group offer, and their fine analogue recording that has transferred well to CD, I don't think the present version is even in the running where comparisons of this C major Quintet are concerned, and though I like their account of the rest of it better than the first movement it is still rather ordinary.
Indeed, at this point I have to say that this whole Amadeus/Aronowitz set has disappointed me. All too often it is as if Norbert Brainin is pushing his colleagues forward a little, with phrases that are snatched at and hurried, and frequently the tone being forced as well. Perhaps a fair sample is the opening of the great G minor Quintet: I could have chosen places where this tendency is still more noticeable, but this eloquent music will exemplify it well enough, with its pathos edged towards petulance and its ineffable grace flattened into something more ordinary—again, compare Grumiaux and his colleagues here to see what I am getting at, not least in the second subject which is unusually (and gloomily) in the tonic minor. The same is true of the Minuet and Adagio ma non troppo that follow.
I must not exaggerate, of course, and admirers of the Amadeus might think that Grumiaux's approach is a bit too romantic. They will rightly point out that this DG set has many virtues and that the playing is that of a masterful ensemble; true, and I would add that in finales the playing often has the right kind of joie de vivre, and that the third disc with the D major and E flat major Quintets is more stylish than the others. Yet overall, I much prefer the Grumiaux group, who are also better recorded; they have also just been reissued at mid-price in the Philips complete Mozart series. Incidentally, the Amadeus and Aronowitz include both of the extant versions of the finale of K593, with the later revised one (which research by Ernst Hess, published in 1961, showed was not by Mozart) played first; Grumiaux and his colleagues play only the original version of this movement.'