Search - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Emanuel Ax :: Mozart: The Piano Quartets

Masterful Mozart

Michael B. Richman | Portland, Maine USA | 01/26/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These two "Piano Quartets" are Mozart at his most magnificent. The team of Ma, Ax, Stern and Laredo, who also brought us classic chamber recordings by Beethoven, Brahms, Faure, and most recently Dvorak, here tackle Mozart with glowing results. I have to say that while I'm a huge fan of Yo-Yo Ma and Isaac Stern, I can be luke warm about Emanuel Ax . While I don't dispute his virtuosity, I sometimes have found his playing style cold and uninspiring. Oh, but not here! This quartet's playing is wonderfully telepathic, and they make the music jump off the page. There's even a little improvising going on, and while it may not be of the same volume and nature as John Coltrane and Miles Davis, it is of similar quality. This Mozart "Piano Quartets" is an essential purchase for serious fans, and a great introduction for newcomers. Happy 250th Wolfie!"

Sorry to rain on the parade

T. Duffy | 04/09/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Sorry to rain on the parade, but assembling a group of superb individual talents in music, as in sports, is no guarantee that a superb ensemble will result. These are all first-order musicians, and no doubt the names sell, but as an ensemble they're no match for the greats who aren't as famous as individuals but who've spent decades struggling together to perfect ensemble playing, worked out interpretations collaboratively in depth and over long times, worked at length to get the instruments' sounds to combine as ideally as possible, etc.



In chamber music big names are no substitute for those decades of subsuming the individual within this hard and less glorious but deeply rewarding work of creating an ensemble of unified depth and vision whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Ma, Ax, Stern, Laredo and Stoltzman are at the tops of their respective games as soloists, but in chamber music they're no match for dedicated chamber groups like the Beaux Arts Trio, Guarneri and Alban Berg Quartets, etc.



On this disk there's no question that the musicians are greats, but interpretive depth and vision of the group as a group just isn't there, and neither is the unity and subtlety of ensemble that comes only with time spent as an ensemble. It's a more than competent recording by musicians of the highest caliber, but nevertheless comes up short. I'd suggest looking for a recording with an established chamber ensemble at the core, such as the Beaux Arts.

"