Mozart was 14 years old when he signed his First String Quartet: March 15, 1770, at seven o'clock in the evening. He then stayed with his father in an inn in Lodi, in the south of Lombardy. The youthful quartet thus belongs to the 'postcards' with which the Quartetto di Cremona (from the city of the same name) sends its greetings from Italy. Including the beautiful sextet that Tchaikovsky composed
… in Florence. In many of this Souvenir de Florence Russian folklore can be heard. As in the quasi folk melody of the Allegretto moderato. Or the cheeky Cossack music with which the (by the way handsome fugue) finale starts. The CD opens eerily light-footed with Wolf's apparently satirical Italian serenade. (HJ)more
