Armida Quartett - Mozart: String Quartets, Vol. 4 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Dissonance Quartet – the name already contains the thrill of transgression. But a dissonance, in which the parts momentarily diverge from triadic harmony, is the necessary condition to achieve an aesthetic of four-part conflict, such as was sought after in the genre of classical string quartet. Mozart’s work in C Major with the “dissonance” epithet is the highlight of a group of six quartets in which he responded to the music of his colleague Joseph Haydn and the latter’s concept of discursive thematic work in a four-part texture. Apart from motivic development, this art of the string quartet enacts a situation of harmonic debate by featuring a series of successive and simultaneous dissonances. Still, the choice of “dissonance” as a main characteristic for an epithet tends to emphasize the aspect of unease over the rational element of discourse. And that is indeed the way Mozart’s contemporaries heard this music. Several of them were irritated by the meandering harmonies in Mozart’s “Haydn quartets”, particularly in the Dissonance Quartet – and certain colleagues even insisted that apparently “false” notes would need to be corrected. Today’s audiences, with their well-advanced musical experience in many styles, no longer find the majority of these dissonances disturbing; our ears can easily twist them into ostensibly classical complacency. Nevertheless, the dissonance at the onset which gave the quartet its name can still sound false in certain people’s ears. While the parts seem to “grope in the dark”, entering one after the other, the first violin comes in last on a note of seemingly entirely different provenance than the others. The rules of euphony may be broken here, but this is everything else than a careless mistake, and Mozart makes this clear by repeating the entire progression on another degree of the scale. Experts have proposed hair-splitting theoretical explanations to reconcile this dissonance with the rules of harmony, but the notes we hear simultaneously are not even particularly dissonant. The divergent note serves as a signal. It introduces a harmonic scission that leads our ears down a path which will allow the lower parts to free themselves from the gravity of downward resolution, inviting them to float upward instead. Mozart was thus the first composer to have begun a string quartet with a slow, groping introduction that provokes our ears with a dissonance, inviting us to embark on a different trajectory.

Tracklist:
01. Mozart: String Quartet No. 44 in C Major, K. 157: I. Allegro
02. Mozart: String Quartet No. 44 in C Major, K. 157: II. Andante
03. Mozart: String Quartet No. 44 in C Major, K. 157: III. Presto
04. Mozart: String Quartet No. 6 in B-Flat Major, K. 159: I. Andante
05. Mozart: String Quartet No. 6 in B-Flat Major, K. 159: II. Allegro
06. Mozart: String Quartet No. 6 in B-Flat Major, K. 159: III. Rondo. Allegro grazioso
07. Mozart: String Quartett No. 7 in E-Flat Major, K. 160: I. Allegro
08. Mozart: String Quartett No. 7 in E-Flat Major, K. 160: II. Un poco adagio
09. Mozart: String Quartett No. 7 in E-Flat Major, K. 160: III. Presto
10. Mozart: String Quartet No. 19 in D Major, K. 465: I. Adagio - Allegro
11. Mozart: String Quartet No. 19 in D Major, K. 465: II. Andante cantabile
12. Mozart: String Quartet No. 19 in D Major, K. 465: III. Menuetto. Allegretto - Trio
13. Mozart: String Quartet No. 19 in D Major, K. 465: IV. Allegro molto


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