These are strongly characterized performances, warm blooded and full-throated, with a richly toned, reverberant and very immediate recording to match. If you like your Mozart quintets this way, that is fine—perhaps it is just a matter of taste as to whether the forceful attack, vibrant tone and aptness to underline points such as cadences pleases you, or not, in this music. But I confess to finding this playing over-projected; concert music rather than room music, with each player addressing listeners on the other side of loudspeakers rather than directing himself at his fellows in the conversational exchange that is the essence of Mozart's chamber music. Frankly, I find such a movement as the minuet in the B flat major Quintet overstated to the extent of being positively disagreeable. Yet this has nothing to do with lack of skill, and even less do I suggest that everything is loud—indeed, the echo effects in this movement are realized clearly enough. One might think that this was due to the approach of Accardo and his colleagues to music composed when Mozart was still only about 17 and living in Salzburg, but even in the E flat major Quintet which was his last, the minuet is strenuous rather than graceful or stately.
The D major Quintet, K593, also belongs to the end of Mozart's life. Although in general these late works are better done, to my ears they are still too forcefully delivered, using an orator's rhetoric rather than persuasion; try listening to the Adagio of this work, or the Andante of K515 to see if you go along with what I mean. Although the playing is compelling I think that an element of poise has been sacrificed in the process of acquiring urgency. While there is much to enjoy in the course of listening to these three discs, not least in some sprightly finales, I ultimately don't find the playing distinguished, particularly in the C minor Quintet (an arrangement of a wind work) and the G minor, perhaps the greatest of all these works.
As so often with Mozart, it is a matter of getting the correct balance between feeling and the courtly language in which it is conveyed; while clearly there is room for different approaches here, it is the Grumiaux Trio with Arpad Gerecz and Max Lesueur reissued as a three-disc set in the Philips Complete Mozart Edition who to my mind achieve a more convincing interpretative focus. While on the subject of alternative recordings, I was disappointed by the Amadeus Quartet/Cecil Aronowitz set (DG), where some good sound is coupled with performances that offer more energy than charm. Grumiaux and his colleagues are much more sensitive and graceful, with finer string tone, and they are well recorded. Both he and Accardo in the present issue also observe the big first-movement repeat in K515 (here at 4'26'') that the DG performance omits. The Philips set remains my first choice in this repertory, and although some collectors may find it a little romantic, this seems to me preferable to the no-nonsense Amadeus manner or the emphatic approach of Salvatore Accardo and his colleagues. Unlike its rivals, the Amadeus/Aronowitz set includes two extant versions of the finale of K593, with the later one played first. However, a piece of research published in 1961 argued convincingly that this was not by Mozart, so it hardly seems necessary to include it even in a complete survey of the string quintet music.'