String And Lean

The music of Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) is so technically superb, so widely imitated, and so rich in quality and quantity that almost since the moment of its creation it has exemplified the Classical style. More than any other single composer, it was Haydn who created the Classical-era symphony. And his 68 string quartets? They are the standard by which all other Classical string quartets were and are judged. No less an expert than Mozart wrote that it was from Haydn that he had learned how to write quartets.

Recordings that include strings quartets by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern are common, but an album that includes music for quartet and voice by each of them is a rarity. Schoenberg's Second String Quartet, with a part for soprano in its third and fourth movements, is standard repertoire, but the version of Berg's Lyric Suite with a vocal part in the final movement is highly unusual, and Webern's bagatelle with voice, an unpublished movement apparently once intended to be part of the Six Bagatelles, Op. 9, receives what is probably its first recording. Novelty aside, the high standards of these performances make this a formidable release. Founded just before the turn of the millennium, Quatuor Diotima plays with the assurance and mutual understanding of a seasoned ensemble. The quartet has a lean, clean sound and the ensemble is immaculate, playing with exquisite expressiveness, an ideal combination for this repertoire.

In their survey of Haydn's string quartets for ASV, the Lindsays have set about the business of restoring these Classical masterpieces to their proper place in the repertoire, with all their brilliant wit and brusqueness intact, and without undue sweetening or romanticizing. The point, it seems clear, is to bring Haydn out from under the familiar shadows of Mozart and Beethoven, and to render his quartets as the true models of quartet writing, not as light Rococo divertissements or tamer antecedents of greater works. The Lindsays are sharp in their characterizations of Op. 33, Nos. 3, 5, and 6, and their lean textures, crisp articulation, transparent repartee, and pungent attacks distinguish these performances from more commercially pretty or polished versions.

The second volume of Northern Flowers' reissues of Russian Disc's series of recordings by the Taneyev Quartet of Nikolay Myaskovsky's 13 String Quartets intelligently and generously couples the composer's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth works in the form. (Russian Disc had oddly and inexplicably coupled the Fourth with the First, the Fifth with the Third and the Sixth with the Second and the Tenth.) As in previous recordings, the Taneyev Quartet throws itself fully into the music. Though the tone is wiry, the sonorities lean, and the intonation occasionally shaky, the players are wholly committed. The music sounds ……

James Leonard @ AllMusic.com

If Boccherini was mischievously dubbed “the wife of Haydn”, then Arriaga must have been his second cousin or so. These three quartets are lovely works. Particularly noteworthy is the Quartet in E-flat major (No. 3), with its charming “Pastorale” second movement, but they are all rewarding pieces. The Guarneri Quartet plays them beautifully. Because they are marginal pieces in the quartet repertoire, and because this disc appeared in the mid-1990s when the classical glut was in full “glutitude”, it was easy to overlook these performances. However, if you enjoy Haydn and his school, you won’t find a better release than this one—and it’s extremely well recorded too. It’s good to see it back.

These were the six quartets that caused Haydn to tell Mozart's father that his son was the finest composer in the world–and Haydn wasn't just saying that because Mozart dedicated the pieces to him. In richness of invention, density of thought, length, and melodic appeal, these pieces set new standards for the medium. However, they are not easy pieces to play or to listen to, and the Juilliard Quartet's lean, emphatic approach works very well in clarifying the busy textures and maximizing the music's dramatic impact. And at budget price, this three-disc set belongs in every string-quartet lover's collection. – David Hurwitz