It's good to have a single disc available of the K428 and K464, split away from the Emerson's set of the six Mozart ''Haydn'' Quartets. A fresh hearing reminds one of the delight the Emerson seem to take in invoking Mozart's sense of respectful care as he sent his ''sons out into the world'', entrusting them to the protection and guidance of their musical godfather, Haydn.
From what we know to be Mozart's long and laborious work on these quartets, the Emerson painstakingly re-create a sombre, almost cautious setting out of material at the start of K428. And from the lively motivic conversation which ensues, they burst into playing of real joie de vivre as if realizing, with the composer, just what could be achieved. They take palpable pleasure, too, in the testing and tasting of sonorities in the Andante. A masterly turning of each bar's six quavers eases the material through the odd chromatic knot and back into close, even-grained writing.
In K464 the Emerson, with Mozart, pay sturdy tribute not only to Haydn but to the muse of Terpsichore, in the keen contrapuntal debates of two minuets and in an Andante whose variations make light, airy play over the ever-springing steps of its gavotte.'