Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - String Quartet No. 21, K. 575 [With score]

-Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 - 5 December 1791)
-Performers: Alban Berg Quartet
String Quartet No. 21 in D-Major, K. 575, written in 1789 [Prussian Quartet I]
00:00 - I. Allegretto
07:35 - II. Andante
11:38 - III. Menuetto & Trio. Allegretto
17:28 - IV. Allegretto
In the spring of 1789, Mozart, in financial straits and desperately in need of new work, set off on a journey to Germany. After visiting Dresden and Leipzig, he arrived in Potsdam on April 25. The city was at the time the virtual capital of Prussia and the residence of the cello-playing King Frederick William II. The following day a memorandum requesting that "one Motzart" had requested an audience with the king to "lay before him" his talents was presented to Frederick William, who referred the request to his director of chamber music, Jean Pierre Duport. What resulted is unfortunately not recorded at the time, but according to later reports supplied by Mozart's widow Constanze the king offered Mozart a post worth 3,000 thaler a year. The composer is said to have expressed concerns about leaving his "good Emperor" (Joseph II) in Vienna. Whatever the truth of the story, Mozart returned to Vienna with some kind of a commission from Frederick William to compose six new string quartets.
By June the present D major Quartet had already been completed, but of the remaining quartets only two were composed, and then only after the lapse of a year. Various reasons have been advanced as an explanation as to why Mozart was so slow in producing the "Prussian" quartets, but one is that the composer had received money "upfront" from the Prussian king; in a money-begging letter to Puchberg he mentions having the quartets engraved at his own expense. The three "Prussian" quartets which were completed are notable for the prominence of their cello parts, obviously intended to please the cello-playing king. In the opening Allegretto of K. 575, for instance, it is the cello that is given the task of presenting the second theme, and all three quartets contain many passages in which the cello emerges either as soloist or in dialogue with one of the other instruments. The K. 575 quartet as a whole is notable for its understated, almost secretive mood. The Andante is a deceptively simple movement that showcases the cello as an agent independent of the other instruments, and the Menuetto (Allegretto) is distinguished by a brief eruption of passion at the start of its second half. The concluding Allegretto opens with a theme given to the cello high in its register before proceeding to run a more disturbed course than is apparent in the remainder of the work. As in other works from the last years of Mozart's life, there is a delightful incorporation of counterpoint into a texture of Classical ease, here in the form of an ornate canon. Scholars have also found fragments of an alternate finale in which Mozart seemed to indulge his puckish side.
[allmusic.com]

[@DamonJHK]

00:00 - I. Allegretto
07:35 - II. Andante
11:38 - III. Menuetto & Trio. Allegretto
17:28 - IV. Allegretto

[@Greenockianx]

Yesterday I stood inches away from a part of Mozart's original score in the British Library. What a moving experience.

[@AVFL173]

WHAT????!???!? NO WAY!!! THATS COOOL!!

[@Sayeedur123]

Clean Bandit - Mozart's House!

[@mylocz643]

Yes!!!! I was thinking where else I heard it!

[@Garrett_Rowland]

Love the Allegretto of this quartet: so fun.

[@Garrett_Rowland]

@Constantinos Aspris Seems I was hasty in typing out that comment 8 months ago. Though, thanks to your reply I got to be prompted to come back and listen to this incredible quartet.
I wonder which movement you might have assumed I was referring to.
The finale: movement 4.

[@billguyan9626]

This has sentimental value to me, being one of the very first quartets I bought decades ago; it was on the reverse side of the Hoffmeister Quartet on an HMV record, played by the Heutling Quartet..

[@trainvideos4988]

Looks like such a fun piece to play. Really equal parts for Mozart!

[@CROxGAM3R]

my friends brother played this and my fav part is the fourth mvt 17:28 - IV. Allegretto

[@TimondeNood]

Thank you!

[@jasonroberts6666]

Divine!!!!

[@KimKhoing]

Thankyou

[@dragondaemonis3801]

I love coda themes in Mozart's quartets - like 18:55. They are so simple and catchy and they are like rays of sunshine after contrapuntal or virtuoso passages. Another one that comes to mind is from the finale of quartet 14.

[@dacoconutnut9503]

0:42 "tenor clef? Pffft it is only for choral music, I only use treble and bass clefs, eventually alto clefs"

[@donaldgoodell7675]

Mozart perform’d on the fortepiano for King Wilhelm II of Prussia in the 3rd year of his reign with the cooperation of his Masonic Brother Prince Karl Lichnovski, who apparently had been sent to Berlin on some kind of Masonic-related spy-mission relating to the approaching Revolution in France) on 26 May 1789-and having secur’d a Scrittura to compose ‘three easily perform’d quartets’ (Wilhelm II of Prussia was a talented amateur violoncellist) and started immediately on the first of his ‘Prussian Quartets’ (this one in D was enter’d into his Catalogue at the end of June 1789-following a promise to Lichnowsky to pay back the 100 dukaten he borrow’d for traveling expenses which he never repaid-until Lichnowsky sued him in Court in Jan 1791 to get back); he return’d to Vienna without Lichnowsky flat broke on 14 July 1789 (‘Bastille Day’) having apparently gambl’d away the last 40 dukaten in his pocket); the violoncello part of these Prussian Quartets often contain delicious solos & elegiac-bravura passages which were put into them ‘to please the King’ although when offer’d the reversion of the post of Kapellmeister in Berlin he (for some reason we shall never know !) he turn’d it down in favor of Joseph II who had made him Court Chamber Composer replacing Willibald von Gluck in November 1787)-had he accepted the Offer his life might have been very different...

[@celloplaysmusic7330]

I think it was king Frederich the II (frederick the great)

[@omegads3862]

12:47 music of the future

[@TimondeNood]

The second movement has a lot in common with Mozart's K476: "Das Veilchen"... sneaky Mozart hehehe

[@beethovenlovedmozart]

I'll bet you he never even had to look at another score. It was already memorized . One of his unique musical gifts

[@hugofejgielman3132]

18:22

[@TommyBecker2023]

I got this song from Mozart becomes uncanny

[@brambismoko1987]

12:46