As a music genre, the string quintet had its most authoritative representative in the eighteenth century in the Italian Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), who composed no fewer than 113 quintets for two violins, viola and two cellos. But when Mozart first approached this genre, in 1773, he looked not to the model of Boccherini’s works, that had already been circulating for some time, but to those of a composer he knew very well and who, like him, had been in the service of the Archbishop-Prince of Salzburg, Michael Haydn (1737-1806), brother of the more famous Franz Joseph. Michael Haydn completed the first of his quintets for two violins, two violas and cello, in C major, on 17th February 1773. It was after hearing this work that Mozart set to work on his first Quintet, the Quintet in B flat major KV 174, in March of the same year.

Interpreters of this triple CD-set are the Quartetto Stradivari, a happy blend of the new and the traditional, with its four world-class string players bringing together a wealth of diverse talent passionately dedicated to the art of music-making ”en famille”. The quartet was formed in 1994, when the violinist Mariana Sirbu and the cellist Mihai Dancila, who had previously had a long and successful association with the Quartetto Academica, joined with Cristina, their daughter and the noted Italian viola player Massimo Paris.