Mozart:
Quintet for pianoforte & winds in E-flat major KV 452
Adagio in B minor for pianoforte KV 540

Beethoven:
Quintet for pianoforte & winds in E-Flat major op. 16

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could have been proud of the unusual instrumentation of Quintet KV 452, for there had been to date no examples of this combination of piano and wind. At the same time combining piano and wind was by no means an easy compositional task, because of the problems with regard to the relative loudness of the instruments involved. This must also be the reason why this instrumentation was seldom re-used except in works which directly call to mind Mozart’s, such as, for example, the quintets of Beethoven and Danzi. There appears in the Quintet a unique blend of different genres and musical styles that expresses the underlying harmoniemusik through the four wind instruments, is reminiscent of a piano concerto and a Sinfonia concertante with the concertante treatment of the instruments involved. Ludwig van Beethoven took Mozart’s work as a direct model for his Quintett op. 16. This is not only the adoption of the same key and sequence of movements obviously, but extends to structural elements and further details. Yet even more than Mozart’s work, Beethoven’s Quintet is a kind of “chamber concerto”, with the piano and wind instruments in opposition. Both quintets belong inseparably together because no further works with this instrumentation and at such an outstanding level have been written.