Here are two great quartets from the set of six that Mozart composed in 1782-85 and dedicated to Haydn. The Guarneri Quartet gives a very fluent and positive account of K464, a work for which I have a particular fondness even among these masterpieces. Yet although the triple-time first movement flows along pleasantly enough, with its blend of grace and energy taken into account, I find myself still less than ideally at ease with this performance, possibly because the energetic passages are too much so, a factor reinforced by a recording whose closeness makes it a touch congested and harsh. To see what I am getting at, you may care to try this movement or, still more obviously, the minuet that follows, where we also need more gentleness and tonal warmth in the richly textured trio section. Furthermore, and surprisingly, the Guarneri choose a deliberate tempo for the busy contrapuntal finale which consequently does not quite take off at an alla breve pace, and the tempo itself varies for the D major episode at 4'00'', where there is some loose ensemble as well.
The Dissonance Quartet takes its name from the mysterious slow introduction to the first movement which is here played too loudly and too fast. My comments above about the playing and recording apply equally here: this is another case where close microphone placing paradoxically deprives the music of that intimacy, not to say refinement, which is surely essential to this style. At the start of the Andante cantabile I hear almost nothing of the marked contrasts between piano and forte, and the whole movement suffers similarly. Such contrasts, indeed, are a feature of this particular work as a whole (as at the start of each movement), and I'm inclined to think that a disc such as this makes a case for recording it, and its companions too, on period instruments which sacrifice a brilliant projection suiting modern concerthalls in favour of something subtler.'