W.A. Mozart (1756–1791)
Andante cantabile and Molto allegro from String Quartet in G Major, K. 387, “Spring”
After moving to Vienna, acquiring a deeper education in Bach, meeting Haydn for the first time and encountering his landmark string quartets, Op. 33, published only a year before in 1781, a twenty-six-year-old Mozart turned again to the genre of string quartet. Motivated purely by inspiration and respect rather than the dictates of patronage or the good fortune of commission, Mozart worked hard over a period of roughly two years to compose what became the set of six quartets he dedicated to Haydn.
