The G minor Quintet receives a very fine, very substantial performance from this period-instrument group. The opening Allegro goes at quite a lively tempo but there is a real breadth to the rhythms and an expansiveness of phrasing which ensure that the scale of the music is properly realized, with considerable intensity at the contrapuntal climaxes of the recapitulation, surely the movement's high points. The minuet is quite brisk, considering that Mozart marked it Allegretto (presumably that was intended to mean 'slower than usual'), and a bit uncompromising, with the chords almost brutal. But the Adagio is wonderfully done, slow, deeply serious, with real tenderness and warmth. I wished only that the players would occasionally give themselves a little more space to articulate the changes in texture and mood more distinctly, and to let the music breathe. The finale, after an introduction of fine concentration, moves with great fire and energy: no sense, as sometimes with this movement, of an easy G major let-down after all the G minor passion. The passion never falters.
I enjoyed the C major Quintet much less. This, too, is a large-scale work, emotionally as well as physically, but Archibudelli seem to treat it more lightly. Again the first movement is on the quick side; I found their performance a little matter-of-fact, and somewhat inflexible – they pass important junctures in the music without seeming aware of their significance, or at least without communicating it. I was not very taken by the droopy style of the development section. The minuet seemed rather understated, and the Andante wanting in intensity – those instrumental dialogues become inconsequential and vapid if their passion is not revealed. And then the finale is surely underplayed: don't for example the distant, flat-side modulations call for some kind of characterization in tone and rhythm? The music's wit is understood, to be sure, but I miss any real sense of awareness of the scale, the momentousness, the formal grandeur of this music.
Others may enjoy K515 more, and maybe K516 less: I find it slightly hard to credit my own feeling that while one is remarkably good, the other is somewhat ordinary. But this is some of Mozart's, or anyone's, greatest music, and the listener, even the critic, can perhaps claim the right to be more than usually subjective over it. R1 '9509071'