Mozart String [Quartet] Quartets. Alban Berg Quartet (Gunter Pichler, Gerhard Schulz, vns; Thomas Kakuska, va; Valentin Erben, vc).

EMI (Full price) (CD) CDC7 49220-2, CDC7 49583-2 and CDC7 49971-2 (three discs, oas: 54, 49 and 45 minutes: DDD).

CDC7 49220-2—G major, K387; D minor, K421/417b. CDC7 49583-2—D major, K499; D major, K575. CDC7 49971-2—B flat major, K589; F major, K590.

Mozart "Haydn" String [Quartet] Quartets. Chilingirian Quartet (Levon Chilingirian, Mark Butler, vns; Nicholas Logie, va; Philip de Groote, vc).

CRD (Full price) (CD) CRD3362/4 (three discs, oas: 59, 56 and 68 minutes: ADD). From CRD1062/4 (12/80).

CRD3362—G major, K387; D minor, K421/417b. CRD3363—E flat major, K428/421b; B flat major, K458, "Hunt". CRD3364—A major, K464; C major, K465, "Dissonance".

Selected comparison:

Quartetto Italiano (8/87) 416 419-2PH8

K499 and K575—selected comparison:

Chilingirian Qt (2/87) CRD3427

K589 and K590—selected comparison:

Chilingirian Qt (2/87) CRD3428

"Haydn" [Quartet] Quartets—selected comparison:

Melos Qt (6/87) 415 870-2GCM3

K387 and K428—selected comparison:

Salomon Qt (11/87) CDA66188

K421 and K465—selected comparison:

Salomon Qt (4/87) CDA66170

K458 and K464—selected comparison:

Salomon Qt (4/88) CDA66234

The Alban Berg Quartet have always tended to favour a big, resonant recorded sound. But on their three new Mozart discs from EMI the acoustic is more glossily reverberant than I've ever heard in recordings of classical chamber music. Rapid contrapuntal passages (as in the finale of K590) are often blurred, the sound tends to swim across Mozart's rests, and in loud, fully scored music I sometimes had the impression I was listening to a small chamber orchestra.

The actual sound emphasizes the Alban Berg Quartet's generally forceful approach to these works. In terms of tonal lustre and precision of ensemble and intonation the Berg are probably unsurpassed among contemporary string quartets, but despite their superb technical address their playing here sometimes seems hectic and over-emphatic. In the opening Allegretto of K499, for instance, they continually push the music on, as if determined to transform it into an Allegro; they exaggerate dynamic contrasts, frequently attacking forte passages with a fierce, hard brilliance, while the crucial ticking quaver figure which permeates the development has in their hands an almost manic relentlessness. As other quartets, including the Chilingirian on CRD, demonstrate, this is a gentler, more introspective piece than the Berg allow, with a strange emotional ambiguity imparted by the often chromatic textures and sudden distant modulations. The minuet, which comes second, is an extraordinarily intense movement, with a prominent chromatic viola line. But I can't say I enjoyed the ferociously driven intensity given to it by the Berg; and this densely scored piece is one to suffer particularly from a lack of textural clarity, with the viola failing to emerge as tellingly as it should.

Not all the faster movements on these discs are as strenuous as these, though the Berg consistently favour briskish tempos. The urgency, boldness and technical finish of the playing often generate an undeniable excitement. Yet repeatedly I was left wishing for more lightness and grace, more inwardness, and a greater feeling of spontaneity, with a less consciously moulded style of phrasing in sustained melodies—the first movement of K575 is a case in point here, with unmarked bulges in both the opening theme (which is hardly sotto voce, as Mozart requests) and the cello-led second subject. Despite some over-inflected phrasing, the Berg's eloquent sense of line and tonal finesse are often compelling in slow movements, particularly those of K575 and K589, where the soloistic textures gain much from the player's individual beauty of timbre. But only in the D minor Quartet, K421, which offers no scope whatever for forceful brilliance, did I find the Berg consistently satisfying; a tense, gravely concentrated reading which probes the music's unquiet spirit with virtually none of the over-emphasis encountered elsewhere.

If you like your Mozart sumptuous-toned and powerfully projected, and don't mind the over-glamorized recording, then you'll enjoy the major-keyed quartets here more than I did. But for more reticent, confidential performances that reach more deeply into this wonderful music I suggest you go for the Chilingirian, or the Quartetto Italiano on Philips, though the latter are only available in an eight-disc set of all the Mozart quartets.

To turn from the Alban Berg Quartet to the Chilingirian's set of the "Haydn" Quartets, first issued on LP in 1980, is to move from a public to a private domain of music-making. The Chilingirian may be slightly less adroit technically than the Berg, particularly as regards intonation (Levon Chilingirian is sometimes a bit wayward in this respect); nor do they aspire to the Berg's tonal opulence and power, but their performances of these six inexhaustible works represent some of the most searching, naturally expressive Mozart playing on disc today. Their tendency, in contradistinction to the Berg, is towards understatement. Tempos are frequently a little slower than average, dynamic contrasts vivid without exaggeration (fortes are never harsh or explosive), phrasing alive and imaginative, yet with no attempt to beautify the moment. In Allegros, notably the first movements of K458 and K465, and the finale of K428, the Chilingirian may appear over-leisurely, slightly lacking in bite and brio; but their uncommonly thoughtful, intimate approach consistently reveals depths and shadows in this music that elude more obviously dynamic performances. Rarely, if ever, have I heard the A major Quartet, K464, played with such grace, such gentle, reflective intensity; more than ever its minuet, spare and absorbed, seems to look forward through Beethoven's Op. 18 No. 5 to the corresponding movement in the late A minor Quartet, Op. 132. And profound reflective tenderness is a quality the Chilingirian consistently bring to the slow movements: listen to their hushed, veiled tone at the start of the Andante of K465, for instance, or the subtly judged ebb and flow of tension in the astonishing chromatic Andante of K428, not, perhaps, con moto, as Mozart asks, but haunting in its subdued disquiet.

The Chilingirian receive an ideally truthful, rounded recording that reveals with ideal clarity their exceptional care for inner detail. No other current version of the "Haydn" Quartets offers richer rewards; and the Chilingirian's only serious rivals in this music are the classic versions by the Quartetto Italiano and the stylish, sometimes revelatory period-instrument performances by the Salomon Quartet (Hyperion). The Melos Quartet, on DG, recorded rather too close for comfort, are unmannered and technically first-rate, but a touch prosaic, with an intermittent suspicion of routine wholly absent from the Chilingirian's music-making.
RW