Haydn: String Quartet, Op. 20 No. 4 in D major 'Sun'

“For the Haydn disc I suggest Op 20/4, Op 64/5 The Lark OR 64/6, and Op 76/1 … a good spread of the early middle and late periods of his maturity. We could also add Op 103 the very last complete movements Haydn wrote ….. the 2 middle movements of a quartet Haydn didn’t have the strength to complete .. Though they are top-class works. Instead he wrote a few notes which he had printed on his card which had words underneath saying ‘Hin ist alle meine Kraft. Alt und schwach bin ich ……….‘ ‚‘All my strength has gone…. Old and weak am I …’. [this is track 15 on the new CD] I know how he felt ……..” David Waterman - cello

The Hugo Wolf Quartet was founded in 1993 at the University of Music in Vienna. The musicians studied with the Alban Berg, Smetana, Amadeus and LaSalle Quartets, so laying the foundation for their international career and soon received top awards such as the European Award for Chamber Music.

The Leipzig String Quartet has long been established as one of the world’s top quartets and here continues its excellent Haydn cycle. “One is immediately transfixed by the elegance and poise of the phrasing, the exactitude of the intonation, the silvery sheen of the sound…” BBC Music Magazine

Haydn’s remarkable Opus 20 quartets are rightfully regarded as landmarks in the history of the string quartet.

Throughout the six contrasting quartets the composer employs compositional techniques that were to shape and define the genre.

We witness a deviation in style from the lightness and wit of his previous quartets to a mood of emotional intensity and darker musical imagery. The six Opus 20 works are all individually exquisite masterpieces and demonstrate a composer at the height of creative maturity. They display an astonishing consistency of excellence and a huge variety of form and style, contrasting dynamics and relentless energy. Increasingly polyphonic textures are infused with a sense of drama, and the cello is often freed from its basso continuo roots to a position of prominence.

The London Haydn Quartet is the ideal advocate for these works and gives elegant, radiant and exhilaratingly assured performances.

On this specially-priced two-disc set, the Daedalus Quartet performs Haydn's six revolutionary Op. 20 “Sun” quartets. These six quartets, composed in 1772, were among the most influential quartets of their era. Before embarking on his own first (Op. 18) string quartets, Beethoven studied the scores of Haydn's six masterpieces, copying them out and scoring the first quartet for string orchestra.

“The excellent Daedalus Quartet… opened the season by playing Haydn's Quartet Op. 20, No. 2, one of the six “Sun” Quartets from that opus. The performance was insightful and vibrant. Hearing such an excellent, up-close performance made this Haydn piece seem even more monumental.” New York Times

The Auryn’s performance of Haydn’s string quartets is exactly as it should be; vigorous, beautiful to listen to and full of feeling. A rediscovery both of sheer beauty and spirited development.

Joseph Haydn’s remarkable series of 68 string quartets encompasses, in effect, his entire compositional career. The ten works together comprising Op. 1, 2 and ‘Op. 0’ date from his 20s (c. 1758 – 1761); and the final nine works of Op. 76 (1797), 77 (1799) and 103 (1803) were written after the ‘London’ Symphonies, and in close proximity to his oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons.

The stylistic journey Haydn took from beginning to end is striking indeed, on account of the extended time period involved and the inevitable changes in musical taste across Europe. The Amsterdam String Quartet is one of today’s leading period instrument string quartets. The ensemble is specialized in the repertoire of the golden age of the string quartet: from 1762 to 1847. The Amsterdam String Quartet performs the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn as well as the finest works of their lesser known contemporaries.

Its members are all internationally respected specialists at the forefront of the early music scene. In 2009 the quartet will embark on an extensive Haydn project which will include performing all the string quartets. Seminars, master classes at leading institutions and research in collaboration with the world's leading Haydn scholars will be presented by means of an interactive website dedicated to the string quartets of Haydn.

Haydn's chamber music centres on his 68 string quartets, a genre of which he was more nearly the literal ‘father’ than the symphony. Haydn’s six Sun Quartets Op. 20 concluded the astonishing series of eighteen works with which Haydn laid the foundations of the classical string quartet and was a decisive factor in the establishment of the composer’s fame. Together with the Quartets op. 17 composed during the previous year, the Quartets op. 20 operated on a level that no Haydn contemporary could even come close to matching, and it would not be exaggerating to rank this collection as one of the most manifold, most experimental, and most enthralling of the eighteenth century. Opp.9, 17 and 20 established the four-movement form with two outer fast movements, a slow movement and a minuet (although in this period the minuet usually precedes the slow movement). They also – op.20 in particular – established the larger dimensions, higher aesthetic pretensions and greater emotional range that were to characterize the genre from this point onwards. They are important exemplars of Haydn's Sturm und Drang manner.