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Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809)
String Quartet in D minor Op.76 No.2 ‘Fifths’ String Quartet in C major Op.76 No.3 ‘Emperor’ String Quartet in Bb major Op.76 No.4 ‘Sunrise’ Eder Quartet Recorded at Casino Zögernitz, Vienna in 1983 and 1984 TELDEC APEX 0927 40824 2 [62.11] |
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The end of the eighteenth century were rich years as far as Haydn’s output of string quartets was concerned. The decade of the 1790s alone saw Opp.71, 74 and the six comprising Op.76 of which half are played here. It was also during the time of his composition of the oratorio The Creation, which makes it a rich period indeed. Where Beethoven’s final quartets would be testing to both players and audiences alike (and right up to the present day too), Haydn’s may have tested his players but the music was immediately appreciated by its audiences, so much so that three of them were given nicknames at once. The set of six was dedicated to the Hungarian Count Erdödy. Haydn’s thematic invention never deserted him, surely a sign that he was one of the great composers, who never suffered from burn-out at the end of their creative lives. The first of the three featured on the disc is called ‘Fifths’ because of the opening four notes on the first violin, two pairs of falling fifths, an interval which invites, and gets, the fullest contrapuntal treatment as the movement develops. If the first two movements manifest a tender calm, the minuet (again contrapuntal but this time a protracted canon) attracted the label ‘Witches’ or ‘Nightwatchman’s’ minuet with its rather pallid tensions, while the finale goes off into the realms of Hungarian or Slovenian folk dance. |
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