String And Lean

Bill Withers: The Complete Sussex and Columbia Albums celebrates the timeless artistry of an American master. The set includes the nine albums that Bill released between 1971 through 1985…

The first of two separate CDs covering Haydn's String Quartets, Op. 50, this 2004 ASV disc presents the first half of the set, dynamically performed by the Lindsay String Quartet and recorded with exceptionally clear sound. Haydn composed these quartets for Artaria's publication in 1787 and dedicated them to Prussian king and cellist Friedrich Wilhelm II. Whether or not Haydn had him in mind for performing these pieces, it is fairly certain he wrote them as a rejoinder to Mozart's six so-called "Haydn" quartets of 1785. Haydn's serious discourse and increased chromaticism match Mozart's tone and harmonic intricacy, though these quartets are more austere and tautly argued than Mozart.

For fans of Sergey Taneyev, the so-called Russian Brahms, the re-issue of the Taneyev Quartets recordings of the nine string quartets of their namesake in 2005 was cause for celebrating. Taped in the late Seventies, their recordings were only intermittently available in what was then called the West, and their re-release restored to the catalogue performances which could well be considered definitive.

These are hardly the Hagen Quartett's first recordings of Beethoven's quartets. The group made its first Beethoven recordings back in 1997 with the Fugue for String Quartet, Op. 137, and the original version of Opus 18/6 for DG's Complete Beethoven Edition. But those early recordings, while breathtakingly good, cannot compare with later recordings of Beethoven's canonical quartets, climaxing with this coupling of Opus 127 and Opus 132, except in the sense that the same excellent ensemble made all of them.