As their Kochel numbers tell us, these two string quintets were written as a pair. They are also masterpieces which the Takacs Quartet have recorded before, with Denes Koromzay (Hungaroton (CD) HCD12656-2, 10/85), but I thought those performances vivid but unsubtle and tonally on the rough side. The present ones with Gyorgy Pauk were recorded in 1990 in Vienna, but regrettably I still feel the first movement of the C major Quintet to be pushed in pace and sound and too many of the music's felicities, not least in harmonic progression, pass by unnoticed. There are some distractingly audible intakes of breath, for example near the end of the exposition at 2'49'' on this track and again in the repeat four minutes later. It's not only the close sound that brings about a lack of soft dynamics, but also the players' general approach which deprives the music of light and shade; and to my mind this matters a good deal, not least in the suave Andante. (There is some doubt as to whether this movement should come second or third, and here it's the former, preceding the minuet.) The low C in the last staccato chord of the finale lingers oddly for four seconds.
The Takacs Quartet and Pauk clearly appreciate the poignancies of the G minor Quintet, one of Mozart's most personal chamber works, but do not convince me that they are equally sensitive to its subtleties. Most of all, one misses that special kind of calm which in this composer is strikingly self-revealing and implies nothing less than tragedy. The throbbing quavers of the first movement are heavyish and the drama of its development (lying principally in its modulations) does not unfold. The urgent minuet and the finale go better, but the poised Adagio cannot reveal all its tearful, muted beauty in the close-up view here offered. The powerful Adagio and Fugue in C minor is a useful fill-up.
The best alternative version of these two works is to be found in the searching yet naturalsounding accounts by the Grumiaux Trio and two colleagues on Philips, but this requires the purchase of a mid-price three-disc set. For a single-disc alternative that is also well recorded, I would suggest the Melos Quartet and Franz Beyer on DG, who are polished and sensitive, although Grumiaux and his colleagues go still deeper.'