Mozart: String Quartet K 464, Etc / Huang, Brentano Quartet

MOZART String Quartet No. 18. String Quintet in D, K 593 1 • Brentano Str Qrt; Hsin-Yun Huang (va) 1 • AEON 747 (62:25) Chamber music enthusiasts not yet familiar with the Brentano String Quartet have a rare treat in store. Soon after joining forces in 1992, the quartet won the Cleveland Quartet and Naumburg prizes. Today they continue a rigorous schedule of international tours. As with all the finest quartets, Brentano’s members—violinists Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violist Misha Amory, and cellist Nina Maria Lee—are individually gifted players of the first rank. Their latest release is an unusual pairing of one of Mozart’s quartets dedicated to Haydn with the D-Major viola Quintet. From the initial statement of the primary thematic material in the A-Major Quartet, the Brentano is at pains to give each line its individual expressive shape and proportion. Every gesture is imbued with meaning; every harmonic progression has a sense of inevitable forward moment