Search - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart :: Mozart: Clarinet Quintet, Horn Quintet, String Quintet

These period-instrument performances demonstrate a firm interpretive viewpoint. They are mellow and lyrical, above all, with a deliberately low excitement quotient. This outlook serves most of the music very well. Eric Hoeprich, playing a reconstructed basset clarinet, sings Mozart's clarinet melodies as beautifully as one could wish. Lowell Greer, playing a period horn, minimizes the differences in tonal quality from one note to another, leaving only enough to demonstrate how the sound of the instrument influenced the melodies Mozart wrote for it. In the late tragic masterpiece for string quintet, though, this interpretive approach shortchanges the music, calming Mozart's fervor almost to the snooze point. And the sour first violin playing in the final movement should certainly have been re-recorded, not reissued! Since the disc is crammed with music (79:10!), that still leaves us with 48 minutes of worthwhile listening for a few bucks, not a bad deal. But listen elsewhere for the String Quintet. --Leslie Gerber