I want to make a few more comments about the Salomon Quartet vs.  the
Quatuor Mosaiques (hopefully my last on the subject):

While there is no doubt in my mind that the QM are objectively far greater
than the SQ - they are more polished, they have a much stronger sense of
line, and they characterise the music with much greater subtlety - I'm
starting to think that the SQ has less tangible qualities that could make
it subjectively as appealing, if not more so, to different people - or even
to the same person in a different mood.  Don Satz and Johan van Veen said,
respectively, that

>The Salomons provide a very "classical" approach which I prefer at times.
>Other times, I go for the more expressive approach of the Mosaiques.

and that

>The problem of the Salomon Quartet is a lack of passion and emotion.

I've begun to feel quite the opposite:  it's the Salomon Quartet that
tends to show more spontaneous emotion.  In my last post, I talked a bit
patronisingly about 'coltish exuberance' - but what you do get in the SQ
is a sense that the players are enjoying themselves, bouncing ideas off
each other and sometimes getting a bit 'carried away'.  Those are very
attractively human qualities that sometimes get lost in the QM's
disciplined mastery.  The QM provide a fantastic finished image of the work
- they are indeed more 'expressive' than the SQ in the sense that they can
pinpoint the emotions contained in the music itself more accurately - but
their recordings give a less vivid impression of the music making *process*
- of a musical conversation involving four distinct individuals with their
own subjective emotions - and in their Haydn quartets op 20, great as they
are, I sometimes miss that just a bit.  Also, while the sound of the SQ is
less pure and finely shaded than that of the QM, it has a particular
plangency which can be very moving in slow movements.

Felix Delbruck
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