Haydn - Complete String Quartets - Kodaly Quartet (NAXOS) 17CDs

Music : Classical : Lossless Not ordinarily an envious sort, I am nonetheless envious of a friend, a violist, who has over the years played all the Haydn quartets with string-playing friends. What fun that must have been! Surely this body of works by Papa Haydn is among the most important ever written for the combination of two violins, viola and cello. And so many! Sixty-eight of them plus the quartet version of 'The Seven Last Words of Christ', plus several 'cassations' and several (like the Op. 3 quartets) now often attributed to others, a total of eighty-three! Almost inexhaustible riches. Over the years I have collected several of the singly-issued CDs of various of the quartets recorded by the redoubtable Kodály Quartet but now have this collection of all of the quartets recorded by them. The price of the collection is very much in the budget range -- less than $4 per CD -- and worth every penny. They range from the Op. 1 quartets (including the strangely designated Op. 1, No. 0) which are much more like divertimenti with their two minuets to the Op. 9 quartets that display the quintessential element of the string quartet, conversation among the individuals. To the Op. 17 set with their virtuosic first violin parts and the Op. 20 quartets which not only echo the Sturm und Drang mood of Haydn's contemporaneous symphonies but also feature much more virtuosic cello parts. To the Op. 33 set which mostly leave behind the fugal, baroquish language of the earlier quartets and show more rhythmic and harmonic daring as well as the wit that has come to be called 'Haydnesque' when it occurs in other composers' works; these quartets also replace minuets with scherzos; it was the Op. 33 quartets that Mozart studied when he was writing his own so-called 'Haydn Quartets'. To the Op. 50 'Prussian' Quartets, written for the cello-playing King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, the two sets of 'Tost' Quartets (Opp. 54, 55, 64), the 'Apponyi' Quartets (Opp. 71 & 74), these the first set specifically meant for public performance (previously the quartets were for private music-making). And on through to the final quartets, Opp. 76 ('Erdödy') and 77 ('Lobkowitz'). This 25-CD set concludes with 'The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross', Op. 51, with its nine slow movements, and the two-movement Op. 103 quartet, written in 1803 when Haydn was failing and which he was unable to finish. The Kodály Quartet recorded these marvelous performances in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Their membership, subsequently changed, consisted of Attila Falvay, 1st violin; Tamás Szabo, 2nd violin; Gábor Fias, viola; and János Devich, cello. Huzzah to them! There are many recording of these works by other quartets but for a combination of musicality, heartfelt playing, excellent recorded sound, and price, this set cannot be beat. Enjoy and Seed!!

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