Haydn: String Quartets Op. 33 Nos 1 3

Fresh from their latest accolade as winners of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, the critically lauded Dudok Quartet Amsterdam embarks on a new project for Resonus Classics recording Franz Joseph Haydn’s six Op. 20 string quartets. This first installment of two volumes sees the quartet explore the C major, G minor and F minor quartets. With some of the most celebrated works from the quartet repertoire, the Dudok Quartet relish delving into the monumental and dramatic gestures within Haydn’s highly developed rhetorical style.

In 1781 Haydn completed his first new set of string quartets in ten years and, trading on his growing fame, naughtily sold them ‘exclusively’ to three publishers simultaneously, while dedicating them to a Russian Grand Duke. For the latest instalment of their Hyperion series, the period instrument London Haydn Quartet has chosen the 1782 edition published by Schmitt of Amsterdam in which the scherzos of Nos 5 and 6 are printed before the slow movements.
Bayan Northcott

The Salomon's observant, sympathetic readings, beautifully recorded, make a highly persuasive case for works that, the 'Lark' apart, are still far too little heard.

Fine performances which are likely to provide lasting pleasure, as is already proven from previous issues.

On 5 April 1784 Joseph Haydn wrote to the Viennese music publishers Artaria and Co accepting an offer of three hundred florins for a set of new string quartets, which he thought would be finished that July. In fact Artaria had to wait three years, until July 1787, before they received all six of the set that was to become known as Opus 50.

Opus 18 needs little introduction and is often revered as demonstrating Beethoven’s total mastery of the Classical String Quartet. The Eybler Quartet completes its exploration of these iconic quartets in an album that showcases radiantly Beethoven’s fiendishly difficult tempi and his genius for finding contrast within a single pulse as well as highlighting the depths of his humour, wit and irony. This second volume features the String Quartets nos. 4-6.

The 200th anniversary of Haydn's death arrived in 2009, and this mammoth box boasts one CD for every year that's passed! Well, not quite, but only a composer as prolific as this Viennese-classical master could even come close: 150 CDs of symphonies, concertos, operas, chamber music, oratorios and more beautiful music that have challenged performers and inspired composers for centuries.