String Quartets Op 76

Only within the last five years have I begun to appreciate the delights of Haydn's music, and even now I know very little of it beyond his later string quartets. It had formerly struck me as ungraspably remote music, but after acquiring, and properly listening to, a couple of '60s quartet recordings on vinyl, its finer qualities belatedly started to sink in. With a few quartets obtained piecemeal in that way from nearby charity shops, I thought it would be good to get a larger set of them on CD, and, to that end, bought the Op 71, 74 & 76 quartets in early '90s performances by the Kodály Quartet on four discs for a few pounds via ebay.

I was perfectly happy with those excellent recordings except, with each disc being in its own separate jewel case, they took up what I felt was a disproportionate expanse of my limited shelf-space. When I read the praise of the recent recordings by the London Haydn Quartet on the Hyperion label, with the same pieces available as two double CD sets, I ordered those to serve as more compact replacements, and donated the old Naxos discs to the local charity shop for someone else to enjoy.

These performances are also excellent, albeit, perhaps owing to their being played on period instruments, they seem airier; less immediate. The double-CD jewel cases, alas, are the fragile kind that break very readily, as mine have already done. I'm not yet fully convinced that 'upgrading' from the older recordings was worth the while, but I've also yet to enough much time with these newer ones to be quite sure, and it could be that further familiarisation (and perhaps some sturdier cases) will win me over.

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