Haydn: The Complete String Quartets
$112.88
What a bargain! All Haydn s String Quartets in One Box! - This is simply an outstanding deal! All of Haydn s String Quartets for under one hundred dollars (I am still shaking my head in disbelief). The playing is superb. There s a new quartet in town folks-The Angeles Quartet! My favorite Quartet is ABQ, but they will be disbanding in July of 2008. I will continue to enjoy ABQ s work through their recordings, but I must say The Angeles Quartet has done a superb job playing on this gigantic box set. Each piece is played with sensitivity, precision, and feeling. I found myself involved in the music-isn t this as good as it gets? If you are a fan of string music, you simply must make this a part of your collection. Thank you Phillips, The Angeles Quartet, and Amazon for making this work available at a price that is amazing!
A superb Haydn benchmark - It takes a lot of time to grasp Haydn s music, because there s much of everything: symphonies, piano sonatas, operas, piano trios, string quartets, choral works, songs, etc. - in sum, more than one thousand individual works. It will probably take more than a year listening to it all, and comprehend it as well (i.e., not as background music). Few, if any person, can have a complete grasp of everything he wrote. But there are nonetheless good reasons trying to grasp Haydn s music, at least partly. This bargain set - 68 string quartets on 21 CDs - is a perfectly good reason. Haydn s string quartets contain some of his finest music. And the present recordings with Angeles Quartet are simply superb. Unlike many period instrument performers, Angeles Quartet avoids meticulous mannerism and plays this music with energy and passion, without loosing structural control. Furthermore, the recordings are excellent, with a rich, creamy and spacious sound. In short, great performances and excellent engineering. A benchmark recording, no less.There are some rival complete sets: Aeolian Quartet (Decca), Festetics Quartet (period instrument performances, Arcana), Tátrai (Hungaroton), and Kodaly Quartet (Naxos). In terms of sound, the present set is clearly preferable. In terms of performances, the only serious rival is Tátrai Quartet s classic collection from the sixties. But Angeles Quartet is not a second choice. If you hesitate, you need both. Budget and shelf space minded collectors need not hesitate.
Perfect Dinner Music - Some might be offended at the idea that music be played in the background to accompany a fine meal, but in fact most of us listen to music in the background. This entire set of 15-CDs is (to my ears) the perfect music to accompany a delicious meal with someone you love. I have owned this CD set for years and never tire of it. I have found that after listening to it hundreds of times that using iTunes in shuffle mode keeps it fresh.
Delightful Background Music - This music is a great buy, and wonderful to listen to while doing desk work or reading. The Angeles String Quartet does an excellent job, and all of the works are so tuneful that I frequently found myself walking around the house humming the tunes after hearing a quartet for the first time.
He truly is the father of string quartets! - This may not be true as far as the instrumentation is concerned, but Haydn is one of the first to explore them as more than a solo violin with a trio accompaniment (second violin, viola and cello), thus giving the chamber music a new dimension. If you ve already explored Haydn s universe through some of his glorious symphonies, these string quartets are an excellent way of further expanding your appreciation of Haydn s music. There are very few dull moments in this lot (and almost all of them are to be found in his early quartets, while there are a few in his very latest works, where he seems to have lost the energy and brio that had established him as one of the best composers of his time). His first works have five movements and ressemble the divertimenti or serenatas. Later on, his quartets took a form which was to become standard, both for Haydn and other composers: four movements - a fast one, a slow one, a minuet and trio and a fast finale. If one listens to Haydn s string quartes in chronological order, one can feel and appreciate his growth and maturity as a composer. The motives introduced during the first movement are developed over the entire work entity, the increasing use of first movements that are monothematic, the expansion of harmonic usage, the combination of serious with funny, intellectual with ridicule, etc. Both Mozart and Beethoven wrote famous series of string quartets, but I ve always liked Haydn s quartets the most. My personal favorites are op. 76 (especially no 3, which later on became the German National Anthem), op. 64 (especially no 5 called The lark) and op. 33 (where Haydn introduced special effects, like a birdcall, which gave the third quartet its name).