The opening of the Mozart string quintet K. 515, as the cello dances upward through the light accompaniment of its fellow players recalls the opening of Haydn’s “Bird” Quartet (Op. 33, No. 3), but thereafter the tone and texture are entirely Mozartian: the uniquely rich and mellow texture he created by emphasizing the inner voices (here, the two violas) that had been regarded as unnecessary “thickening” elements, even rude, by 18th-century listeners.
But after that mounting cello phrase, there is the same inner accompanying motion, the same [as in Haydn’s “Bird”] placing of the first violin. Yet Haydn’s nervous rhythm is avoided: in place of his independent six-measure phrases – the motion broken abruptly between them – Mozart has a linked series of five-measure phrases with absolutely uninterrupted continuity.
The slow movement is one of Mozart’s seemingly effortless heartbreakers – in essence a dialogue between first violin and first viola.
The minuet is elegant but by no means lightweight, with a chromatically-tinged trio of grand proportions.
The finale is a jubilant, elegant sublimation of feeling of the finest and strongest sort by a man who while yet only 30 years old was in the process of being set on a pedestal.
Here, for your enjoyment is the Quintet KV 515 by Mozart:
