Mozart String Quartets

After their multi-award-winning Virgin Classics debut with a CD of Debussy, Ravel and Fauré, a program of Brahms, and the pop-jazz collection `Fiction', the members of the Ébène Quartet turn to works that lie close to the very origins of stringquartet writing - Mozart's so-called `Haydn Quartets'.

Composed in 1785, the set of six quartets was dedicated by Mozart to his friend and mentor Haydn, the acknowledged `father' of the string quartet. The most famous of the set is the quartet in C major, KV 465, the `Dissonance'. It opens with a mysterious introduction, with layered harmonies creating the dissonance that gives the quartet its distinctive nickname. It is coupled with the quartet in D minor, KV 421 (another of the `Haydn Quartets) and the Divertimento in F major KV 138, written when Mozart was a teenager.

Pierre Colombet, first violin of the Ébène Quartet explains the ensemble's approach to Mozart: "We felt that, after Fiction, it would be a good idea to choose something really very classical, essential quartet music which went back to the roots of the quartet. It is such amazing music, so rich and filled with such subtlety; completely unpretentious, yet of such genius."