Customer Reviews

Haydn: The Complete String Quartets (Box Set)

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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.

You can read other reviews of these recordings at the Amazon product pages for the single issues, e.g. Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 33 "Russian", No. 1, No. 2 "The Joke", No. 5 "How do you do?", Haydn: The Emperor, Fifths and Sunrise Quartets, Haydn: String Quartets Op. 76, Nos. 1-3, Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 76, Nos. 4, 5 and 6.

Total time: 25 hours, 42 minutes.

Heartily, even urgently, recommended.

Scott Morrison

If you are reading this, then you must like Haydn's quartets. Perhaps you are hesitating to buy the whole lot, or uncertain which set to buy. I cannot offer an adequate work by work comparative assessment, but I do exhort you not to deny yourself the pleasures of this set. Yes, 25 CDs is quite a lot but within a few months you will have listened to all of them more than once. And please do not assume that there is a lot of milk here, but only a little cream. It's not like that at all. All the works are interesting and the performances are very good to excellent with the sound attractively rich and forward.

It's a customary practice these days, or at least within the last 10 years or so, to "thicken" up a string quartet recording by quadrupling the violins, doubling the violas, etc. This results in a fat, smooth, sonorous recording such as those performed by I Musici, I Solisti Italiani, etc. The Complete Haydn String Quartets, as performed by the Kodaly Quartet and recorded at the Unitarian Church in Budapest in 1991, doesn't need such treatment. The recording is so clear and full you can practically smell the wood of the pews or see rays of sound bouncing off the stained glass windows. Enhanced by natural reverb, the strings need no "sweetening" and the overall quartets require no compression or volume balancing. What you hear is an absolute dream, a chance to dive head first into a repertoire that is often overshadowed by the quartets or other luminaries such as Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, or Dvorak. This set, albeit as expensive as it is, is highly recommended. These recordings are perfect for Sunday morning, winding down from work after a hectic day, or even as accompaniment while you peruse the NY Times. Highly recommended.

The string quartet has always held a privileged place in classical music -- the conversation between four individuals, two violinists, a cellist and a violist, represents music not made for the general public but as a gift to the musicians; as such the genre has often represented the superego of composers -- their deepest utterances, and the ones they knew they would be judged by their peers and not the public. The genre also typifies the Enlightenment, an era marked by the utmost mathematical rationality but never far from the tumultuous storms of coming revolution -- however, the genre died in the Romantic era -- paradoxically because it was too private for narcisssist displays of will to power -- and was only resurrected by the introspection of 20th century modernists like Bartok, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.

Sometime in the 1760's Haydn basically invented the string quartet, in addition to perfecting the sonata form inherited by Beethoven, development forms, the four-movement symphony, and the "classical style" (as opposed to baroque polyphony and the genres lumped together as early music); this meant an infusion of drama (derived from his failures as an opera composer, but adding juice to his instrumental music), subjectivity,a bumptious mixture of high and low styles, and poetry infused with enlightenment reason. Every central European composer of concert music owes him everything. He is probably the single most under-rated innovator in the history of music, because his music as the joke goes is too simple for amateurs and too complex for professionals. Put it this way: Beethoven and Mozart acknowledged him as their only lord and master, as they were left with mining the territory he first explored.

His string quartets are the crowning glory of his art, as one can trace his development out of the baroque and galante styles into a wider-ranging relationship to tonality than had hitherto been known, where music began to tell Shakespearean stories that mixed comedy and tragedy in a mutable fashion absent from the work of deities like Bach and Handel, stately stasis was replaced by drama; he wrote in the vicinity of seventy quartets, and no two movements sound similar, the sheer range of his achievement is unbelievable. The Kodaly Quartet out of Budapest, not far from the Ezterhazy court where Haydn performed most of his labors, recorded all of them for the budget label Naxos in the late eighties and nineties, and now all 24 CD's are available for less than a hundred bucks; this music as performed by these masters constitutes the most gracious, witty, graceful and pleasing tribute to the values of western civilization I can imagine, and would be a bargain at twice the price.

I bought two cds of Haydn quartets on Naxos to sample the playing of the Kodaly Quartet - one from the early quartets, the other from the later ones - with the intention of eventually purchasing the complete set. Unfortunately, I found the performances lackluster. The playing was professional enough, sometimes with lovely playing from the first violinist, but the overall effect was uninspired, artistically uncommitted. Not one for complete collections by a conductor or group, I took a chance on the set with the Angeles String Quartet on Philips, a group (now disbanded) sans an international career, never venturing far from its home base. I was pleasantly surprised. Except for issues about the sound engineering (too much resonance, which one can get used to), the performances are on the whole more musically satisfying and inspired than the Kodaly set. Especially noteworthy are places where the second violinist, viola, and cello are merely accompanying the first violinist. The Angeles Quartet always finds ways to be interesting, involved. Not so with the Kodaly Quartet. Comparing first violinists, I found Tamás Szabo's tone to be more ingratiating in longer stretches than Kathleen Lenski's somewhat more steely sound (recording?), but her virtuosity and impeccable intonation won me over. And the Angeles group seemed tighter and more energized than the Kodaly Quartet.

The Kodaly Quartet set is less expensive, and better recorded than the Philips set. But I'd still go with the latter.

I bought this set a year ago, really because I got an incredibly cheap price on it new, and couldn't pass it up. Boy, was I underestimating this set! I have collected all the old Schneider Quartet records on Haydn Soceity, not the later fake stereos, and the deluxe reissue set of the old ProArte Quartet. On the whole, considering sound and ease of play, this set beats all. A few demurrals might be the Ulbrich Quartet on the Op. 20s, the best ever. And of course the Schneider Quartet had moments others did not have, but they were never complete. I have mostly avoided Naxos releases, but this one is just outrageously good.

So this is Haydn's String Quartets, about as complete as possible, and by some claims the only truly complete set on the market. It includes some Opus Spurious (which for those of you who are even less musically knowledgeable than myself means they are now attributed through scholarly research to someone else, or at least not Haydn, possibly, maybe) and some non-standard string quartet material.

The playing is good, in fact all these recorded sets have good playing, despite a lot of bickering about the chosen interpretations that other reviewers may throw around. On the subject of other sets, I know of 4 that offer themselves as complete and they are the Aeolian, Buchberger, Kodaly and Los Angeles quartets. The Buchberger is an 'Original Instrument' Set, and as such is not comparable, if you want that sort of thing then it is your only option, I don't. What I have heard of The Aeolian set sounds very dull to me, and it is my opinion that the playing is fine, the recording has killed it, as it has on so many modern classical recordings, I have never heard a string quartet sound like that, except on recordings so I blame that sets inferiority to this set on that basis. The other set is the Los Angeles, and again based on the little I have heard is a good group with some good quality playing. Others have complained about sound recording issues on that set, but I cannot recollect anything from what I heard, my overall opinion is the the Los Angeles is a little sterile, and considering it is by Phillips this is not that strange.

So with all the choices how did I decide to by this, and why? Well it is the cheaper and most easily available of all the sets, it comes with 25 CD's packaged in cardboard sleeves, and a thick book that chats about the quaterts and obviously provides listings. This booklet also contains complete details of other Naxos Complete Haydn sets, and I would not be surprised to find it is in those sets too, a way to save money I should not wonder.

No set would completely appease anyone. I have this so that I have them all and can survey them at will, but I also have recordings by other artists, who have not and will never produce a complete set. I have heard it said that the Op. 20s are where it starts, and I would agree. The music is good, but it does not become art until about the Op. 20. And I would rather not spend $30 on CD's just to get some probably spurious and what were possibly practice pieces by Haydn as he taught himself what he was doing, this set means I can get that and still grab a bargain. I have come to enjoy Naxos because a lot of their recordings sound like they are being performed live, something labels like DG, Phillips and others fail to do, and this set does this better than any of the others. This is important because the music sounds better with that edge. Also String Quartets just sound so GOOD in a church.

Should you buy this? Well that is your lookout, if you want a competent, well recorded, well played complete set by a group that plays on good instruments, and you are not a perfectionist then this will suit you well. At $3 per CD I call bargain, and if you are into mp3 you might get a much better deal. If you have very specific musical requirements, you will need to audition, no review of mine will you help you sir.

If you have money, then I suggest you get a list of all the pieces, research what is available and buy individual recordings. Alternately buy this set, and keep your ears open for other recordings of those pieces that don't ring true for you. I love this set, the sound is so good, the playing is so good and the beauty of the music comes through everytime I listen, I am not bored of this yet, and expect to be listening to this set still in 30 years time.

These works are unmatched in their importance and beauty. The recordings are clear and wonderful. You will have listened to the entire collection before you realize. Haydn was an expressive, innovative instrumentalist and composer. Don't hesitate to purchase this set.

I'm not a musician. But I know what I like. And this music is a wonderful accompaniment to my life. As it could be to yours.

This is the sort of purchase that would make more sense if I were a "survivalist" stocking a bomb-shelter in upper Ontario, with the intention of living all alone several decades after the extinction of my species. Twenty-five CDs, the complete string quartets of Joseph Haydn including the "Seven Last Words", all by the well-reputed Kodaly Quartet! And for a reasonable price!

It came about by chance: I attended one of the fringe concerts at the Berkeley Early Music Festival (June 2010), at which the New Esterhazy Quartet laid all the scores of all of Haydn's quartets on a table and held a lottery drawing to select which to perform on their gut-strung historically appropriate instruments. I wonder if the term "chutzpah" was part of the musical vocabulary at Esterhaza. There were perhaps a hundred people in attendance, and though I bought 20 tickets, only one of my favorites was drawn. I soon realized, however, what a large number of Haydn's best compositions I'd seldom or never listened to. So I ran a search in the amazoo ...

I've only listened to four quartets plucked at random from the box so far, and to "The Seven Last Words", possibly my favorite of all Haydn compositions. I reckon I'll plough through all 25 disks eventually, but my early impression is that these recordings make an irrefutable case for "historically informed performance" of Haydn on period instruments. The New Esterhazy Quartet was ragged at times, not unexpectedly given their concert concept, but warm, witty, and exciting. The Kodaly Quartet is polished enough but thick when it should sound flighty, stolid when it should sound exuberant, 'classical' when it should sound avant-garde. Haydn was the avant-garde of his era. Haydn was a closet Figaro, a restless challenger of everything stuffy and stodgy. How paradoxical it is that his music sounds so much more 'original' on original instruments!

But I should mention that the recording of the "Seven Last Words" on modern strings by the Fitzwilliam Quartet is musically delicious, the best I know of, far more satisfying than this one by the Kodaly Four.

Later Thoughts:
My 3-star rating is irrelevant. The value of this bargain box will depend on the musical 'needs' of the buyer. If you have no musical needs, don't buy it. If you are a newbie to this repertoire, unfamiliar with any of Haydn's quartets, you couldn't do yourself a bigger favor than to buy this box and start exploring. If you're an ardent Haydnite, you'll already have some or many of the quartets in your collection, but still this box will fill in the blanks and help organize your taste. That's my situation. The Kodaly Quartet is like a high-end Japanese car, a well-oiled musical vehicle, but somewhat generic.