The B flat major String Quintet is the first Mozart work for this combination of instruments and was written in Salzburg when he was 17. The C minor Quintet appears to date from after a pair of great quintets, the C major and G minor of 1787, but in fact it's an arrangement of a wind serenade for eight instruments from about five years earlier, a darkly coloured and impressive work. In the recording by the Melos Quartet and Franz Beyer I prefer the performance of this C minor Quintet, for they are a skilful ensemble and their account of it is authoritative; nevertheless, at times one feels that with all its unison gestures the music reveals its origin perhaps too much and does not sit ideally on the string instruments. (The English sleeve-note by Alec Hyatt King suggests that the composer may have made the arrangement ''because he needed money to repay some of a debt to Puchberg, and an arrangement... would have taken far less time and effort than composing a new work''.) In the youthful piece, K174, these DG performers seem strenuous and unsmiling, short on spontaneity and charm, and although one feels this especially in the Adagio and Minuet I was never happy with the approach. Indeed, even in the C minor Quintet such movements as the ingenious Minuet (with its canonic trio al rovescio) and the variation-form finale are prosaic. The recording matches the performances in a certain heaviness of tone and a lack of gentler dynamics. Though admirably clear, it is also marginally sharp. At 48 minutes this CD is not lengthy.
The sound on the RCA disc of two other Mozart string quintets, recorded live in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City on two separate occasions, in October 1984 and February 1985, is rather coarse. In K515 the players tend to over-emphasis or over-emoting, and there is a great deal of audible breathing, for example in the Andante, which seems little short of ruinous to a reasonable listening situation; and the same applies to the Andante in the other work represented here, K614. Incidentally, there is a degree of legitimate scholarly dispute (which divides existing recordings nearly equally) as to whether the Andante of K515 should come as the second or third movement: both orders are satisfactory, but the Guarneri and Ida Kavafian play it second and the Melos Quartet with Franz Beyer play it third. Both ensembles observe the exposition repeat of the first movement, as do the Guarneri in K614. The Melos ensemble's account for DG of K515 is the one I readily prefer, not only to the Guarneri and Kavafian but also to their playing of the other work reviewed above, for it is straightforward and honest, but in the end it wants magic and fails to present this masterpiece as persuasively as it should. On the other hand, the C minor Quintet, K516 is the best possible coupling, better than the E flat major Quintet, K614. The outer movements of this latter quintet were sternly criticized by the late Hans Keller as ''a stylistic mystery and a textural failure'' and it's clear what he meant. As presented here by the Guarneri Quartet, with Kim Kashkashian as the violist, I cannot enthuse about playing with few tonal subtleties—listen for example to the Minuet, which is rhythmically square too—and nothing of significance to compensate for their absence.'