The appearance of the young Hagen Quartet from Austria is so agreeable in Hugo Jehle's sleeve-photo, taken against an appropriate period background of 'Ionian' white and gold, that one feels a little churlish in echoing RL's view (expressed in his ''Quarterly Retrospects'' of this year's February and August issues) that their otherwise splendid playing is perhaps too concerned with beauty of sound and phrase-shaping and so incurs a risk of narcissism. I thought on these lines as early as Clemens Hagen's cello playing from bar 45 of the first movement in the B flat major Quartet, where he delays his entry by rubato and then swoops up to a high A in a way that is a bit too arch for my taste, and the effect is underlined by his brother Lukas (the leader) playing the same phrase eight bars later without these interpretative glosses. The same thing happens in the exposition repeat. Not everyone will agree, either, with the way the cellist shortens a quaver to a semiquaver in bar two of his melody at the start of the Larghetto—and in this he is followed by his brother. The Hagen's account of the Minuet seems fussy too.
But it is a poor critic who does not even try to meet performers on their own interpretative terms, and I'm happy to say that I was won over by this Mozart playing. It certainly is more than a little gilded in a way I can only call self-conscious, but it is affectionate too, and the sound is fine if occasionally a little over-rich. And in any case the performance of K590 is more straightforward than that of its predecessor, while having many felicities, not least the Quartet's uniformly fine tone, shapely phrasing and timing, and wide dynamic range. The Orlando's Philips account of K589 is good too, but does not flow quite so elegantly as that of the Hagen Quartet and the string tone has a slight edge to it which is possibly more realistic but is less easy on the ear. Neither ensemble, incidentally, gives the initial Allegro much forward drive, but the leisurely approach works.'