These recordings first appeared in the late 1980s with little fanfare at full price. Now they’re back in print with little fanfare at budget price. The performances are lovely. Christian Zacharias, for one, was a more direct Mozartian than his more mannered recordings from a decade or so later suggest. The rippled, Apollonian symmetry he brings to the piano parts reminds me of Walter Gieseking’s pearly Mozart playing. Within modest dynamic parameters, the pianist and his colleagues respond to each other with acute sensitivity. Notice the seamless subtlety with which they pass the melodic line back and forth in the second-subject and development sections of the E-flat Quartet’s Allegro. Or how, in the G minor Quartet’s slow movement, Zacharias’ left hand matches cellist Tilmann Wick’s tone to the point where he seems to be bowing rather than striking the bass line.
The ensemble’s elegant cool contrasts to the meatier vibrancy we hear in the Ax-Ma-Laredo-Stern, Giuranna/Beaux Arts Trio, and Rubinstein/Guarneri traversals, though Franz Peter Zimmermann’s penetrating tone invariably opens up in quiet, sustained passages (all to the music’s expressive good). If you’re on a budget and in the mood for Mozart’s Piano Quartets, this release easily ranks with the fine Menuhin Festival Piano Quartet on Naxos for stylish, tasteful playing, excellent sound, and modest cost.
