Mozart: String Quartets "The Hunt", "Dissonance"
This offering from the Melos Quartet is the recording of choice for the two "name" quartets in Mozart's set of six dedicated to Joseph Haydn; at this price, it's frankly a steal. The accounts are buoyant and brilliantly played, delivered with the kind of polish that does not so much dazzle as allow one to see beneath the surface into the expressive grain of the music. The recorded sound is close but well balanced, and dry enough to let the instruments speak and sound as they do in a real chamber environment. One of the benefits of this approach is that it allows the substantial tonal differences between first and second violins to register, as though the two were different personalities.--Ted Libbey