Haydn: String Quartet, Op. 33 No. 3 in C major ‘The Bird'

The six String Quartets Op.33, though known as the 'Russian' in reference to their dedicatee the Grand Duke of Russia and future Tsar Paul I, in fact have much more in common with Austrian folk music and comic opera. Almost ten years after the extreme intensity of his Op.20, Haydn shows his wit and good humour in these works featuring scherzos, written 'in a new and special way'.

"the best quartet to have come out of Spain for many a year" The Strad

A fourth volume of Haydn String Quartets finds period band The London Haydn Quartet on sparkling form. Their previous recordings have been praised for the ‘glowing sound of gut strings played perfectly in tune … the ensemble’s delicacy of nuance and sensitivity to harmonic colour, treating the listener as a privileged eavesdropper’ (Gramophone).

This competitively priced set contains the six Op 33 quartets, which Haydn wrote in Esterhazy after neglecting the genre for a decade, and which immediately became popular around Europe on publication.

This 2 CD set shows the Canadian Eybler Quartet performing music once again from their favourite chosen period, performed on historical instruments. Their performance was described by Gramophone Magazine as “totally engaging performances that breathe life into Backofen’s music”, this recording is sure to warrant similar praise.

This release marks the Borodin’s third CD for ONYX.

Haydn composed his six string quartets op.33 between 1778 and 1781. He wrote that he had composed them ‘in a new and special way’. This was a rather mischievous claim, as the quartets do not represent a revolutionary compositional advance, rather a shift in style towards intimacy and subtlely from the flamboyant op.20 set of nearly ten years earlier. It was, though, a rather good promotional and sales gimmick on Haydn’s part.

These quartets are the lightest and most humorous in nature of all his mature quartets and do break new ground in having scherzos in place of the old minuet. This new term and the nature of the scherzo would appeal in a few years time to Haydn’s young pupil from Bonn, Ludwig van Beethoven.

Good humour abounds throughout op.33, especially the repeated false ending to the finale of no.2, where Haydn was said to have made a bet with friends that there would be applause at several points before the work ended. The nickname ‘The Joke’ was quickly applied to this work.

Arcana proudly announces the release of the last volume of the Haydn String Quartets performed by the Festetics Quartet.The long-awaited release is released on occasion of the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death.

Recorded by Michel Bernstein in Budapest in Spring 2006 this last volume represents the crowning achievement of a project conceived by the well-known founder of Arcana, who died a few months later. It is the first complete cycle on period instruments and features the complete 58 string quartets authenticated by the composer for the great Artaria edition: 19 CDs collected in 9 volumes in chronological order with liner notes written by the eminent Hungarian musicologist László Somfai. Founded in 1985, the Festetics Quartet was the first Hungarian ensemble to perform works of the classical quartet literature on period instruments. By their choice of name they decided to commemorate the outstanding figure of the Hungarian Enlightement and patron of the arts Count György Festetics. Their recording of Haydn's Op. 9. String Quartet series released in 1989 on Hungaroton met international recognition. Since then they have made more than 50 CDs and appear regularly on the stages of most European concert halls and festivals. Since 1996 they have toured the United States three times, where they gave concerts to great acclaim. The group has studied Haydn's manuscripts extensively and recorded a number for the Arcana label.

"This important period-instrument set of the quartets is now complete, against the odds, just in time for the 200th anniversary of the death of the most neglected of first-rank composers. Against the odds, the Festetics set is complete at last. For a decade, the Festetics have been releasing superbly springy recordings of Haydn's quartets on the Arcana label. But the death of the label's founder and producer Michel Bernstein a couple of years ago left the project one volume short: since then, I have hardly been able to look at my CD shelf, so maddening was it see the sequence of black spines: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And now you'll have to excuse me while I head over to the CD player…" The Daily Telegraph, April 2009