Mozart project
The Engegård Quartet is approaching the end of a very exciting recording project with the ambitious and visionary recording label LAWO Classics.
We have been working on Mozart’s string quartets since our first notes together, and we feel that Mozart is a composer with whom we have an exceptionally close relationship. Three of us have studied and worked in Salzburg, Mozart's birthplace, and as a quartet we have explored and played his music throughout our life as a quartet. It is a huge honour and responsibility to record Mozart’s complete string quartets, but it feels right to take some of our most cherished concert repertoire into the recording studio.
Our first CD, LAWO Classics LWC1123 released in 2017, presented the three final quartets Mozart ever wrote, known as the “Prussian” quartets. KV 575 in D major, KV 589 in B flat major and KV 590 in F major. They are dedicated to the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm II, an accomplished amateur cellist. They are intricately constructed and give a prominent role to all voices, but particularly to the cello.
The 2nd CD, LAWO Classics LWC1167 released in 2019, includes three of the six string quartets Mozart dedicated to Joseph Haydn, KV 421 in D minor, KV 428 in E flat major and KV 465 i C major. One of the very few composers whom the young Mozart saw as an equal, and with whom he felt he could share his ideas and musical thoughts, was the composer Joseph Haydn. Although these two giants did not meet very often, they had a very special connection. After studying Haydn's string quartets with care and admiration, 1783 Mozart composed a set of six string quartets which he dedicated to his good friend and source of inspiration, Joseph Haydn. After hearing these quartets, Haydn said the now infamous words to Mozart's father: “I tell you before God, and as an honest man: Your son is the greatest composer I know or have ever heard of. He has taste, and in addition the greatest knowledge of composition."
The third CD, of the final three quartets dedicated to Mozart's friend Joseph Haydn, was released in 2021. This CD includes KV 387 in G major, KV 458 in B flat major and KV 464 in A major. Written in Vienna during Mozart's "mature" years - from the age of 25 until his death at the age of 36 in 1791 - they are an exceptional and unique gift from a friend. Mozart's own son thought these quartets would have made Mozart immortal even if they were the only thing he had ever written.
The 4th and 5th CDs are in the pipeline, and we will be recording the 6th, and final, CD in December 2023.