Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
String Quartet in D minor, Op. 42
String Quartet, Op. 51 ‘Seven Last Words’
String Quartet in G Major, Op. 77 No. 1
String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77 No. 2
The London Haydn Quartet
rec. 2022, Potton Hall, Dunwich, UK
Hyperion CDA68410 [2 CDs: 146]
I confess that being unfamiliar with The London Haydn Quartet when I requested this new recording for review, I was not aware that it was a period band. However, I would hope that the endorsement in my survey of the 1992 recording of the Seven Last Words by the Quatuor Mosaïques is sufficient to counter any accusation of my being inimical in principle to period accounts.
The central issue of taste still obtains, of course, and as much I can appreciate the skill and artistry of the players here, I do not much like their squalling, vibrato-free tone, the swelling on phrases, some inevitable uncertainty of tuning and the fact that the gut strings in general sound more like viols than the modern instruments to which we have become habituated. For me, the limitations of the period instruments ensure a certain harsh sameness of texture and a restriction of dynamics which inhibit expressivity and the performances here are recorded so close as to accentuate the players’ every sniff and intake of breath, creating a rather claustrophobic ambience. Furthermore, the quartets here are played at baroque pitch, a semitone lower than modern accounts, which inevitably and perceptibly robs the music of some brilliance.
I do not for one moment impugn the technical prowess of the London Haydn Quartet but comparison with a recording of the two Op. 77 string quartets, the last Haydn wrote in the genre, by the Kodály Quartet or the Lindsays reminded me of what I find to be missing in this new issue: greater tonal warmth and dynamic variety and an altogether more relaxed approach to this congenial music. The much more sombre Op. 42 makes a neat contrast to the affable late works but I find the whine inherent here in its long, melodic lines hard to take.
In a sense, there is little point my adumbrating my responses to the Seven Last Words as it reflects the same objections: I find it not so much “inward-looking” as dull and laboured – and very slow at an overall timing of 76 minutes. While it is true that favourite accounts by the Borodin, Lindsay and Pražák Quartets take more than seventy minutes over this music, they manage to create and sustain much more inner tension. I had to smile wryly when I read in a review by BBC Music magazine purporting to love this recording that “a few rough edges to intonation are probably inevitable and worth putting up with. I have to say that their sound is at its finest when they apply a modicum of vibrato” – which seems to me to damn with faint praise and indicate the basis of my own reservations.
This double CD set is attractively presented as per Hyperion’s usual high standards, with an excellent, scholarly informative essay by Richard Wigmore and handsome period engravings of the Royal Hospital, Greenwich – but it is not to my liking.
Ralph Moore
Help us financially by purchasing from
The London Haydn Quartet: Catherine Manson (violin), Michael Gurevich (violin), John Crockatt (viola), Jonathan Manson (cello)
Op 42 performed from the Hoffmeister (Vienna) edition published in 1785, Op 77 from the Artaria (Vienna) edition published in 1802, and Op 51 from the Artaria (Vienna) edition published in 1798.
