Leipziger Streichquartett . Hartmut Rohde

String quintets originated shortly before Mozart's time. A great example in the genre was Michael Haydn. Mozart greatly enjoyed playing the viola on chamber music evenings. It is no surprise that he wrote his First String Quintet as early as 1773, at the age of seventeen. It is touching music by a genius at an early stage of his development, at times still a little hybrid, but in the finale already a forerunner of the mature style of his chamber music pieces. As much as fourteen years later, in 1787, he returned to the genre and composed an impressive series of five quintets. There is no certainty as to what prompted him to write them. Alfred Einstein suggests that Mozart wrote them to attract the attention of Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia. The king played the cello himself and employed Boccherini as his chamber music composer, the result being about a hundred string quintets for two celli. It is likely that Mozart's quintets, for two violas, were written with the monarch in mind for the bass line. Another possibility is that Mozart simply wanted to explore the richer sound possibilities of the quintet. These works are certainly successful on that account. KV515 and KV516 are probably the very best pieces of chamber music Mozart ever wrote.