String Quintet No. 4 in G Minor

The key of G minor had always exerted a powerful grip on Mozart’s imagination, but not even the great Piano Quartet No. 1, K478 can match the depths of emotion plumbed by this string quintet, its all-enveloping sound world the consequence of a texture enriched by two violas. Composed in May 1787, it stands at a difficult moment in Mozart’s life. His father was mortally ill, debts were beginning to mount and the Viennese public was proving fickle. Is K. 516 a howl of despair? That’s too simplistic a reading: but there’s no doubting the anguish in the first movement’s heartfelt leaps and fluid oscillations between minor and major. Violent weak-beat chords and deceptive phrasing assault the “Menuetto”, a minuet in name only. And if the prayerful E-flat slow movement promises benediction, it’s short-lived as a change to the minor and worrying interjections from viola 2 intrude. But Mozart isn’t done with sorrow. A 38-bar “Adagio” introduction to the finale sounds the most despairing music thus far. It’s left to an impossibly cheerful “Allegro” to propose a happy ending that nonetheless can’t efface the memory of what has just preceded it.