I'm feeling rather ashamed of myself: I just listened again to the Quatuor
Mosaiques disc of the two Mozart quartets and enjoyed them so much that I
felt that I had been making - well not an unnecessary fuss, because I still
don't think that Mozart's music is in any way straight-forward - but that
I had been trying to push Beethoven and Mozart into conceptual boxes which
can only stifle and distort qualities in their works which are all the
greater for being so hard to pin down.  As I listened to the quartets this
time, I could feel intuitively a whole range of psychological and emotional
resonances, not just in the details, but across the movements and works as
a whole.  And while these remain difficult to conceptualize in the G major
quartet, I am starting to think that the D minor quartet in fact does have
a describable psychological 'programme', in terms of which it does make
sense for the QM to play the main theme of the first movement more or less
identically piano in the recapitulation and the exposition.  The fact that
the tensions created in the development aren't allowed to be released in
the recapitulation, but instead only lead 'back to square one', is in line
with the sense of unresolved despondency in this movement.  Also, allowing
the crescendo at the end of the development to lead into a forte would have
been too overt, too 'direct', for such private and introverted emotions as
this quartet expresses, and of course it would have drawn attention away
from the real outburst, which comes in the movement's coda.

(One thing I'm still not happy with: why do these period groups (I've
also been listening to the clarinet quintet played by L'Archibudelli and
an outstanding clarinettist called Charles Neidich - I'd like to hear more
from him) repeat both the exposition and the development-recapitulation of
first movements? Surely that over-exposes the principal themes and flattens
the surprises of the second half? Also it makes the development seem very
short.)

Felix Delbruck (contritely resolving to trust his own ears more in future)
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