Maintaining focus on Mozart’s last years, members of the Alexander String Quartet join with electrifying and much-lauded pianist Joyce Yang on this recording of the two piano quartets. This is the second of a three-volume set which will include many of Mozart’s great chamber works from that period. Eric Bromberger’s liner notes contextualize these works within the canon: “Some have claimed that Mozart invented the piano quartet, but he did not. Other composers- including the fourteen year old Beethoven- had written quartets for piano and strings earlier, but Mozart was the first to face squarely the challenges of this difficult form, and he wrote the first two great piano quartets.” Now in its 37th season, the Alexander String Quartet’s discography includes major cycles by Bartok, Kodaly, Mozart, Shostakovich, and Beethoven. ASQ is also an important advocate of new music, with over 35 commissions and premieres. In addition to extensive concertizing on five continents, the quartet is on the faculty of San Francisco State University where they direct the Instructional Program of the Morrison Chamber Music Center. They have been feted as Ensemble in Residence with San Francisco Performances for more than a quartet century and at the Mondavi Center at UC Davis for 15 years.
