The Bennewitz Quartet and Arnaud Thorette perform Mozart

Mozart, Quintet in C Major, K 515

More than fourteen years after his last quintet, and while in the depths of his Don Giovanni, Mozart finished, April 19th 1787, the Quintet in C Major K 515. With its imposing dimensions, this work towers over Mozart's chamber music. Composed just before the somber Quintet in G Minor K 516, it was regarded as its luminous double just as the Jupiter Symphony was next to the symphony in G Minor K 550. However vigorous and majestic, the partition is none the less punctuated by shadows which express Mozart's somber and joyful resignation in the face of death. It is the same resignation that Mozart evokes in a letter from April 4th 1787 to his father: "Because death […] is the the true goal of our life, I have in the past few years accustomed myself so with this excellent friend of mankind that its face […] is now both soothing and consoling." Starting off with an exchange of arpeggios at the cello and a pattern based on the violin gruppetto, the first movement "Allegro" altogether expresses the growing confidence soon to be tarnished by sudden Minor modulations. This same combination of feelings finds its way into the "Andante": the dialogue between the violin and the viola is made of invocations and resistances which seem to be the first version of a romantic duet between Don Giovanni and Zerlina. Much could also be said about the minuet and its melancholic trio in F Major which was at the time disproportionately vast. The just as considerable final "Rondo" displays an unbelievable thematic variety, alternating moments of dense polyphony with lyrical ardors.

© Auditorium du Louvre 2011