Each of these three chamber works has the kind of quality that one expects from the mature Mozart, and although the Horn Quintet doesn't offer the depth of the others (notably the Clarinet Quintet) it is a most enjoyable piece. It was written for the composer's friend Joseph Leutgeb—a friend from his Salzburg years who also settled in Vienna and as the owner of a cheese shop was often the butt of his good-natured jokes—and offers genial melody and humour. The performance here is pleasing enough in its own terms, with sensible tempos and some vitality, but a question must be raised over Frantisek Langweil's idiosyncratically round and even homespun tone, of a quality which perhaps links up with the Eastern European source of these performances (one thinks of the brass in some Russian orchestral playing of two or three decades ago). The oboist in the Oboe Quartet also offers a tonal quality that will not be to every taste, being acidly penetrating, and while the performance of this work is competent it fails to provide the kind of stylistic elegance or interpretative insight that would compensate for the actual sound—which in any case is somewhat congested and unsophisticated by modern standards.
I fear that I must be even less complimentary about the account of the late masterpiece which is the Clarinet Quintet. This work really does need tonal beauties and subtleties which seem beyond the skill of the present artists, at least as recorded here. It sounds, indeed, something of an ad hoc affair, in which even the basic tempo of the spacious first movement is uneasy and subject to something not far from hurry. Of course we need rhythmic flexibility in Mozart, but this is of the wrong kind. Bohuslav Zahradnik plays fluently enough, but he is simply not expressive enough to do justice to this music, while the playing of the Panocha Quartet is, I fear, sometimes plain dull—as in the Larghetto and the start of the finale. At super-bargain price one might have tried to find a kind word for this disc, but at full price it is not worth considering and frankly I am surprised that Supraphon have attached this price tag, particularly given the date of the recording.'