Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet No. 17 in B major, K. 458, nicknamed "The Hunt", is the fourth of the quartets dedicated to Haydn. It was completed in 1784.John Irving, Mozart: The 'Haydn' Quartets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1998): 13. "K. 458 was entered in Mozart's own handwritten thematic catalogue on 9 November 1784." It is in four movements: Neither Mozart nor Artaria (the publisher) called this piece "The Hunt". "For Mozart's contemporaries, the first movement of K.458 evidently evoked the 'chasse' topic, the main components of which were a time signature (sometimes featuring a strong upbeat) and triadic melodies based largely around tonic and dominant chords (doubtless stemming from the physical limitations of the actual hunting horns to notes of the harmonic series)."Irving (1998): 69 According to Irving, Mozart's first intention was to conclude with a polonaise and sketched 65 bars (p. 17).
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Recording by the Borromeo String Quartet from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format