Flute Quartets

A very readable foreword and extensive Critical Commentary with all necessary information enrich this Urtext edition by master Munich flautist and Mozart expert Henrik Wiese. One may learn there, for instance, that there are some peculiarities in the transmission history of Mozart’s four flute quartets: one quartet (C major, Anh. 171 [K. 285b]) is in all likelihood falsely attributed and thus not by Mozart at all, another (G major, K. 285a) survives in only two movements, and peculiarly at that, raising at least some doubts about the established version, and a third flute quartet, though doubtless by Mozart, remains completely misdated in the Köchel catalogue (that in A major, K. 298, composed in 1786 not 1778).

Only the first flute quartet, in D major (K. 285), can be dated clearly, to Mozart’s stay in Mannheim in 1777. There he had fallen hopelessly in love with Aloysia Weber, the elder sister of Constanze who years later would become his wife. This masterful edition is worth acquiring for this work alone.