Mozart – Piano Quartet no.1 in g minor, K.478 (1785)
Mozart only wrote two piano quartets, this one and then a second in Eb Major. I mentioned it before, but Mozart received a commission for three quartets by Franz Anton Hoffmeister. It seemed like a gamble because the piano quartet was a very new genre without any significant works, but the idea of a great chamber music writer like Mozart composing them seemed like it would rake in some money. Unfortunately (?) Mozart was too good of a composer, and the complexity and difficulty of this quartet made Hoffmeister change his mind. Sounds strange but remember, chamber music was now being marketed to amateurs and hobbyists to play at home for friends, and so Hoffmeister assumed that a difficult score wouldn’t sell as well. So he released Mozart from the contract. Even so, Mozart finished the Eb Major quartet for fun, and it is a great piece of music. This first quartet is also outstanding, and the first movement alone has Mozart’s trademark of deceptive simplicity. It opens with a rhythmic motif, all instruments in unison. Out of this small opening evolves a large web of ideas that go through a a somber, but graceful journey. Here the emotions are very restrained, in the minor we have quiet suffering, and in the major we have some smiles and charm. After the repeat, we go into the development, with fragments of the main idea modulating through different keys, restless with a lot of chromatic runs. Here, in the space of ambiguous harmony, Mozart is ‘allowed’ to touch on dissonances that go unnoticed in the flow. Near the coda, a large interval is a displaced second and it hides such dissonance. Through this movement I can’t help but think of a Caspar David Friedrich painting, humans looking at the beauty of nature, or the melancholy of grey clouds, without thinking of the science that understands how it happens. The slow movement opens with the piano along, playing a pretty aria-like melody. The other instruments join in, and again we fall into the ‘effortless flow’ that is another illusion of Mozart’s music. The last movement is a charming rondo that opens with the piano again, but when the strings join in, the notes get more upbeat. Taking us away from the more introverted first movement and into a fun loving atmosphere, like summer day music. For variation there is a minor key section, with the piano playing quick arpeggios, and in a restatement of the key, we have sinister droning in the cello as the other instruments play over it, like a Baroque organ. After the piano has a quasi-cadenza, we go into the repeat, and then the coda which has the instruments burst out in joy.
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