Mozart and his contemporaries
The Quatuor Mosaïques, which specializes in the music of the Viennese Classical period in its original sound, begins its cycle by combining two string quartets by Mozart with equally brilliant contributions by two of his contemporaries. Mozart's String Quartet in G major K 387 from 1782 is the first of the six quartets dedicated to Haydn and has strong references to his Opus 33. The String Quartet in B major K 589 from 1790, on the other hand, is one of the so-called "Prussian Quartets." The Prussian King Frederick William II was an enthusiastic cellist, and so the cello plays an important role in these works. Josef Leopold Edler von Eybler, a student of Haydn and a friend of Mozart, was also very fond of chamber music. He considered him to be a "thorough composer, a young musician equally skilled in chamber music and church music, very experienced in compositional technique [...], of whom there are unfortunately few equals," said Mozart about the later conductor of the Vienna Court Orchestra. Eybler's string quartets reveal Mozart's influences, but go their own way in their deeply emotional sound language. And the string quartet op. 4/3 by the Salzburg composer and pianist Joseph Johann Baptist Woelfl is full of rhythmic refinements.
