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Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)
Quartet for flute and string trio in D, K285 (1777) [14:12]
Quartet for flute and string trio in G, K285a (1778) [8:24]
Quartet for flute and string trio in C, K285b (1777-8) [15:51]
Quartet for flute and string trio in G, K370 (K368b) (1781) [13:25]
Quartet for flute and string trio in A, K298 (1786) [11:22]
Karel Valter (traverse flute)
Pablo Valetti (violin), Peter Biely (viola), Petr Skalka (cello)
rec. 2018, Studio Waldenburg, Germany
Reviewed in SACD stereo
ARS PRODUKTION ARS38285 SACD [63:14] 

While Mozart is known to have been commissioned to write flute quartets for the amateur player Ferdinand Dejean, it is not in fact known if the surviving pieces recorded here were all or in part composed for this commission. Peter Reidmeister’s interesting booklet notes go into some detail on this subject, and on the provenance of each quartet. The odd man out here is K370, which is an arrangement of the Oboe Quartet in F major K370, a work very much of the same high standard as K285 and included here as its counterpart.

To cut to the point, this is a very fine recording indeed. Karel Valter plays a copy of a flute by August Gresner made in Dresden in around 1790, and he makes a delightful sound. The soft sonorities of this wooden instrument blends well with the strings when in chamber music mode but has a beautiful lyrical quality when floating above their textures. Vibrato is pretty much absent from all players, but they deliver plenty of character and dynamic contrast and the music is expressed with a transparent liveliness that is attractive from the start.

There is refinement everywhere in these pieces as you might expect, but this ensemble loves to dig in and deliver some real ‘pesante’ effects from time to time, as can be heard amidst the final Rondeau. Allegretto of K285. Period instrument recordings of these pieces are not unknown, and for comparison I referred to Lisa Beznosiuk on the Avie label (review). This is another very fine recording, but there are differences. The energy in the opening Allegro of K285 isn’t quite as high as with Valter, and the contrast between this and the gorgeous central Adagio is less marked; Valter and colleagues giving the music just a little more expressive space. Filler works play a role here, with the Avie disc including Beethoven’s Serenade in D Major, Op. 25.

There are of course numerous modern instrument recordings around, and even ones done with recorder, as Michele Petri’s enjoyable but ultimately less satisfactory version on Our Records demonstrates (review). One of the classic modern instrument versions is that with William Bennett and the Grumiaux Trio, now available on Eloquence. If you are shopping around it’s worth comparing the vibrato-laden sound of these performances with the clean-cut period sound on the present recording. Both have their appeal, but these days I know which one I prefer. The elegant phrasing, fascinating contrasts and collective sonorities of Karel Valter and friends is an approach to which I find myself increasingly drawn, and with fine SACD sound from ARS this is what we in the old record shop would have considered a ‘winner’.

Dominy Clements
  



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