Haydn: String Quartet, Op. 20 No. 5 in F minor

This first disc by the Hermès Quartet couples two major works in the genre, the Quartet op.20 no.5, the jewel of one of Haydn's most prestigious sets, and Beethoven's op.127, the first of his late quartets and generally regarded as the peak of the quartet repertoire.

The Hermès Quartet, founded in 2008 in Lyon, is the winner of 2012 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. It also won First Prize and the Coup de Coeur Breguet Prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 2011.

The musical identity of the ensemble and the cohesion of its members have been strengthened by working with such musicians as Miguel da Silva (Ysaÿe Quartet); Eberhard Feltz and Arnold Steinhardt (Guarneri Quartet); Valentin Erben and Hatto Beyerle (Alban Berg Quartet) and Walter Levin (LaSalle Quartet). The Hermès Quartet is currently engaged in postgraduate study with the Artemis Quartet and the Ysaÿe Quartet.

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.

A fascinating CD coupling inspired arrangements by Mozart of fugues by J. S. Bach with Haydn quartets that feature a fugal movement and music by their contemporaries Werner and Albrechtsberger, highly esteemed by Emperor Joseph II, who even opened a special department for fugal forms in the imperial library in Vienna.

‘ . . . it is well known that changes in taste have very little influence on the fugue. For this reason, lovers of music for quartet need not be afraid. . . to find in these works of art anything that might be offensive to the tastes of our own time . . . precisely because they are written in a spirit that never goes out of fashion . . .’ Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 1808

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.