K. 589 opens with a relaxed, triple-time movement, two of whose graceful themes are announced by the cello, then cunningly rescored in the recapitulation. The cello also takes the lead in the Larghetto, whose bare sonorities and air of refined abstraction are characteristic of Mozart’s later slow movements (compare, say, the Andante of the E flat–major String Quintet K. 614 or the Larghetto of the B-flat Piano Concerto K. 595). In the minuet and finale Mozart abandons cello-led concertante textures and reverts to a style closer to the “Haydn” Quartets published in 1785. The finale, in a jig-like 6/8 meter, treats its blithe theme with dazzling resource and contrapuntal legerdemain. But the quartet’s expressive climax comes where you least expect it: in the trio of the minuet, usually a point of relaxation in an 18thcentury symphony or quartet. Here Mozart expands the trio to nearly double the length of the courtly minuet, gradually intensifying the music, via a disquieting chromatic passage, to a climax of hectic brilliance, with virtuosic cross-string bowing for the first violin over a sustained cello pedal.
Throughout the 19th century, the string quartet remained a quintessentially Austro-German genre. In Italy, several composers who had made their name in opera produced quartets modelled on Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, sometimes leavened with a dash of Rossini. Donizetti composed as many as 18 fluent, lightweight quartets. But the only 19th-century Italian quartets with a toehold in the repertoire are Verdi’s E-minor work and Puccini’s singlemovement Cristantemi. Verdi’s Quartet, his only extended instrumental work, came about by chance. In the winter of 1872–3 the composer was in Naples supervising revivals of Don Carlo and Aida. Rehearsals had to be postponed when his principal soprano, Teresa Stolz, fell ill. Left with time on his hands in March, Verdi set about composing a string quartet. On April 1 he invited a group of friends to the Hotel delle Crocelle where, without introduction, four players entered the foyer and embarked on the first performance of the piece. The response was enthusiastic. Yet Verdi, characteristically, spoke deprecatingly of the work, insisting that he had written it “for mere amusement” and had never attached any importance to it. He even forbade its publication and public performance,
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