Mozart interpretation is weirdly constrained-- most performers certainly know that a lot of Beethoven's weirdo techniques came from him-- like the sudden dynami

Mozart interpretation is weirdly constrained-- most performers certainly know that a lot of Beethoven's weirdo techniques came from him-- like the sudden dynamic contrasts, or the many formal innovations of mashing things up. But they refuse to experiment with emphasizing those aspects, at least to the same degree they do in their performances of Beethoven. Take the last movement of Mozart's String Quartet in E-flat Major, K 428. Mozart begins it without a lyrical melody (one which only appears in the final statement of the rondo theme)-- all four instruments are just playing an accompaniment to nothing. Then a contrasting phrase with an overactive melody in the first violin speeds its way into a half-cadence, after which the initial accompaniment material is developed in more substantial imitative polyphony. On paper this looks completely reasonable-- starting with a little mystery, gaining some momentum, then developing what it started with. The problem is there is a repeat sign after the speedy melody-- that means the players are forced by the tradition of the form to go back to the banal accompanimental pattern right when the music should be moving toward development[1]. It's a clear a musical joke-- these forms force the listener to hear everything twice, and the composer is using that fact to ruin what would otherwise be a sensible flow. It's equivalent to getting up from one's chair and running vigorously back to one's chair to sit and do nothing. In every performance I've heard, the performers underplay the weirdness of the first phrase and smooth over those hard edges at the repeat sign, thus hiding the joke. It's a shame because if they made it sound as weird and jarring as it's written, even people who don't listen to classical music would get the joke. [1] And the performer can't simply leave out the repeats as performers do with sonata repeats-- in a rondo this would disrupt the proportions of the phrases. Edit: clarification