Alfred Brendel - Schubert: Forellenquintett / Mozart: Piano Quartet in G minor (1995)

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Alfred Brendel - Schubert: Forellenquintett / Mozart: Piano Quartet in G minor (1995)

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Mozart, of course, is probably the archetypal musical prodigy, paraded around Europe, playing, improvising and composing from the ridiculously early age of about four. It used to be thought that Leopold might have done much of his son's early composing, as well as his publicity, but it's clear that even infantile Mozart is streets ahead of his father - witness the latter's supremely facile 'Toy Symphony'.
Easier to overlook are the prodigious talents of Franz Schubert. It is astonishing to think that so accomplished a work as 'The Trout' was written when he was a mere 22. It was commissioned by the amateur cellist Sylvester Paumgartner, who had been so impressed by the song of the same name that he asked Schubert for a set of variations upon its theme in the piano quintet (forming the fourth movement of the work). Paumgartner also specified his preferred instrumentation, with double-bass rather than second violin making up the string quartet 'half'. The music seems supremely effortless, almost pre-ordained. The other work on this recording, Mozart's G minor Piano Quartet, was his 478th work (according to the Kochel catalogue, at least) and provides the polar opposite of a contrast to what has gone before. Between them, Schubert and Mozart manage to make the other two giants of the period, Haydn and Beethoven, look like very late developers.
Individually, of course, Zehetmair and Zimmerman have earned themselves enormous reputations as soloists (on violin and viola respectively). Significantly, both have won special acclaim through their playing of earlier music - solo Bach particularly. Frankly, I'd have preferred a hefty dose of period instrument restraint to have remained with them. The style of playing, particularly Zehetmair's, is decidedly too Romantic and 'warm', even for so sunny and youthful a work as 'The Trout'. I'm with Leopold Mozart who, in his textbook of 1756 advised that vibrato be used sparingly. And with Schoenberg, who thought that vibrato sounded like the bleating of a goat. There aren't many gaps in today's overcrowded and over-duplicated CD catalogue, but an ensemble that played chamber music of the Classical period in a cooler, Baroque manner would fill one of them. The search for the definitive 'Trout', therefore, is still on.