Mozart: String Quartets, K. 464 And K. 428

Description

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) String Quartet in A Major, K. 464 String Quartet in E Flat Major, K. 428 Born in Salzburg in 1756, the son of a musician who was later appointed Vice-Kapellmeister to the ruling Archbishop, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart won international fame as a child prodigy. He showed particular ability as a keyboard-player and as a violinist, astonishing audiences by his skill and musical understanding, and later as a composer. Adolescence in Salzburg proved less satisfactory, particularly after the death of the old Archbishop and the succession of a new patron who showed much less indulgence to members of his household. Leopold Mozart had early realised the exceptional gifts of his son and had made it his business to develop them to the detriment of his own career, but father and son both understood that provincial Salzburg was far too limited in its opportunities. Eventually, in 1781, during the course of a visit to Vienna in the entourage of the Archbishop, Mozart quarrelled with his employer and secured his dismissal. The remaining ten years of his life were spent in Vienna, where he enjoyed initial success and later more variable fortune, in relative independence of his father and of a patron. He died in December 1791, when matters seemed to have taken a turn for the better, with the success of the German opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) and a promise of employment at the Cathedral of St. Stephen. In Vienna Mozart appeared during his early years in the city as a virtuoso pianist, writing a series of piano concertos, principally for his own use. In Salzburg he had at one time paid considerable attention to the violin, and his father, an authority on the subject of violin teaching and author of a well known book on the subject, considered he could have been as good a violinist as anyone. In Salzburg he was for some years Konzertmeister, before leaving in 1777 to seek his fortune in Mannheim and in Paris. When he returned in 1779 it was as court organist. It must be supposed that Mozart would always have been ready to take part in musical performances at home or perhaps at social gatherings, in whatever capacity, and we have one account, at least, of a memorable evening of quartet playing at a party given by Stephen Storace, when Mozart played the viola, Haydn and Dittersdorf the violins and a fourth composer, Vanhal, the cello, to the great pleasure of the singer Michael Kelly, who recorded the event, and to the poet Casti and the composer Paisiello, who were also present. Mozart completed some 26 string quartets, the first in 1770, at the age of fourteen, and the last in June 1790, the year before his death, when he wrote the first three quartets of a proposed set of six for the King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia. The Quartet in A major, K. 464, was entered into Mozart's index of his works on 10th January 1785, to be published in September by Artaria as one of a set of six, forming, collectively, Opus X, in t