Amadeus Quartet - Mozart: The String Quartets (2010)

In the stereo era, before digital, there were two great sets of recordings of Mozart's string quartets: the Quartetto Italiano's for Philips and the Amadeus Quartet's for Deutsche Grammophon. The Italian quartet's performances were rich and ripe, lush and lovely, sweet and sensual; the Austrian-English quartet's performances, reissued here in 2010, are sensitive but intense, controlled but soulful, intimate but objective. Where the Quartetto Italiano saw Mozart's music from one point of view, the Amadeus Quartet took a more nuanced view, showing more sides of the composer, and arguably more depth. Technically, the Amadeus' players are just as fine as the Italiano's but naturally quite different; their tone is more pungent, their balances less blended, and their rhythms more buoyant than their counterparts. The Amadeus set has two distinct advantages over the Italians, however: that set includes the three Divertimentos K. 136-138, and fits on six discs, while the Italiano's is on eight. Sonically, it's a toss-up; Philips gives the Italiano quartet its trademark opulent stereo sound, while DG gives the Amadeus players their trademark crystalline stereo sound. ~ James Leonard