Mozart: String Quartet No. 20 in D Major, K. 499 "Hoffmeister" (2025 Remastered) Guarneri Quartet

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791):
• 1 Mozart: String Quartet No. 20 in D Major, K. 499: I. Allegretto (2025 Remastered) 08:17
• 2 Mozart: String Quartet No. 20 in D Major, K. 499: II. Menuetto (Allegretto). Trio (2025 Remastered) 03:26
• 3 Mozart: String Quartet No. 20 in D Major, K. 499: III. Adagio espressivo (2025 Remastered) 08:27
• 4 Mozart: String Quartet No. 20 in D Major, K. 499: IV. Allegro (2025 Remastered) 04:50
• Total Runtime 25:00

Info zu Mozart: String Quartet No. 20 in D Major, K. 499 "Hoffmeister" (2025 Remastered)

In 1785 Mozart published six string quartets dedicated to Haydn and modeled after Haydn’s pioneering work in expanding and enriching the string quartet form. The six quartets are now considered among the high points of the chamber music repertory. Despite their quality, however, they attracted little public attention at the time of publication, and did nothing to produce what the hard-pressed composer needed more than anything else – commissions for new works.

As a result, Mozart did not again try his hand at quartet-writing for more than a year, and when he did the result was only a single work – K. 499. Apparently to assure publication, he dedicated the quartet to the publisher, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, and there is some evidence that Hoffmeister had also endorsed a promissory note that the composer had given a creditor. Whatever its purpose, the dedication was a demeaning action in a day when composers usually dedicated their music to aristocratic patrons or professional colleagues.

Although the K. 499 quartet may historically be overshadowed by the six “Haydn” quartets, it is fully up to its predecessors in ingenuity and craftsmanship, and is notable for its clarity of texture, Mozart’s explorations in contrapuntal writing, and the dramatic passages in which the first violin soars high above the other instruments.

In the first movement, allegretto, the simple little tune that is the main subject is enriched in a variety of ways – contrasting rhythms, restatements in inversion (played upside down) and fragmentation, a richly harmonized counter-theme, a canon (round) between the violin and cello, an echo of the viola by the first violin, and subtle shifts in key. In the last bar of the exposition, moreover, Mozart introduces a staccato 8th-note figure that suggests a ticking clock, and the development contrasts the main theme with the ticking figure.

The main section of the second movement, a minuet, is seasoned by liberal use of chromatics (half-steps) and the extensive contrapuntal writing between the instruments. The trio is in triplets with sharp contrasts between forte and piano, and imitations first between the violins and then between the viola and the cello.

The florid texture of the slow movement, adagio, is varied by contrasts among the instruments – lower strings against higher strings, violin against cello, and first violin against the other three instruments.

Arnold Steinhardt, violin 1
John Dalley, violin 2
Michael Tree, viola
David Soyer, violoncello

Digitally remastered

The Guarneri Quartet
was an American string quartet founded in 1964 at the Marlboro Music School and Festival. It was admired for its rich, warm, complex tone and its bold, dramatic interpretations of the quartet literature, with a particular affinity for the works of Beethoven and Bartók. Through teaching at Harpur College (which became Binghamton University), University of Maryland, Curtis Institute of Music, and at Marlboro, the Guarneri players helped nurture interest in quartet playing for a generation of young musicians. The group's extensive touring and recording activities, coupled with its outreach efforts to engage audiences, contributed to the rapid growth in the popularity of chamber music during the 1970s and 1980s. The quartet is notable for its longevity: the group performed for 45 years with only one personnel change, when cellist David Soyer retired in 2001 and was replaced by his student Peter Wiley. The Guarneri Quartet disbanded in 2009.

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