London Haydn Quartet Hyperion CDA 67877 (2 CDs for the price of 1)****

This may be the third volume in the London Haydn Quartet's survey of the quartets of Haydn, but it's also the point at which, effectively, the string quartet as we know it really began. The six quartets of Haydn's Op 20 (written in 1772, the year of the FarewellSymphony) treat the four instruments as equals in ways his earlier quartets did not, and the discourse between them is often meaty, as the use of fugue in three of the finales makes perfectly clear. The period instruments players of the London Haydn Quartet may perhaps be a little too aware of these works' special historical burden. Their playing is at times too earnest, sometimes even too concerned to wrest the focus away from the first violin. But their lean tone keeps everything impeccably clear, they avoid any sense of casualness, and they make the music sound austerely fresh. See url.ie/4qdb