Mozart: String Quintet in E-flat Major, K. 614

By Erik Petersons on May 22, 2017.

If the late quartets and quintets are condemned in particular, it is chiefly because they do not correspond to the ‘Classical’ ideal promoted about 1850 on the basis of the six quartets dedicated to Haydn and the quintets K. 515 and 516 of 1787 - in this sense, they are rejected on broad, biographical grounds and because of the unfulfilled expectation (or perhaps the unfulfilled desire) that they correspond to what was then (and still is) accepted as the Classical style. But there was no such expectation at the time the works were written, nor were the works received as such...What later critics perceived as new and often unsuccessful ‘late’ style, then, was not an issue for Mozart’s audiences, even though the style of the works is clearly ‘different’...

—Simon P. Keefe, The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, 2003

The third installment in the project podcast series explores the late style of Mozart.

Our interview with Christoph Wolff discusses how the historical and sociocultural context shaped the late styles of Bach and Mozart.

This work was performed on the second concert of PCMS' Departure & Discovery Project at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater.