The Emerson Quartet and Kim Kashkashian perform Mozart (I/II)

After over four decades of international success and nine Grammy Awards, the Emerson Quartet—who scheduled their final concerts in October 2023—are known as one of the greatest ensembles of their generation. In 1989, they joined American violist Kim Kashkashian, a fellow Grammy winner known for the lyrical beauty of her interpretations, in a performance of Mozart’s String Quartets Nos. 3 and 4, often viewed as the pinnacle of his chamber music output and written in the same year as Don Giovanni.

In April 1787, Mozart wrote a letter to his ailing father in which he described death as humanity’s “true best friend … the key to our true happiness.” We hear that sanguine attitude in this serene and luminous Quintet in C Major, written during that same period, which concludes in an atmosphere of unfettered ebullience. Scored for string quartet and an extra viola (like all six of Mozart’s quintets), it abounds with typically Mozartian nuances that would later inspire Schubert—especially in the slow movement, a veritably operatic duet between the viola and the first violin.