Haydn: String Quartets Op. 9 No. 4 and Op. 77 No. 2 — Fry Street Quartet
The sequel to Voices of Modernism, with the same fiery playing: an early quartet that sounds Beethovenish and a late one that sounds Mozartean.
This is a review I wrote for SA-CD.net and published there on the 12th of January 2008. SA-CD.net has since become hraudio.net and the old review pages went with it, so this is reproduced from the Internet Archive’s capture. It ran as a site review, and carries a joint copyright line with SA-CD.net.
The review is reproduced as it stood. Only the site’s own furniture around it — the star graphics, the “was this review helpful?” footer — has been dropped, and the ratings it carried are restated as numbers below.
IsoMike · FSQCD4 · hybrid disc · stereo and multichannel · DSD recording
Performance 4.5/5 · Sonics stereo 5/5, multichannel 5/5
This is a ‘sequel’ to the two disc “Voices of Modernism and the String Quartet” IsoMike release that I reviewed earlier and liked immensely. On this disc we get two string quartets by Joseph Haydn (Op. 9 No. 4 in D minor, and Op. 77 No. 2 in F major).
When I reviewed the two disc album, I referred to the Fry Street Quartet performance as ‘gripping.’ I am very appy to report that on this album, the players have lost none of their fiery enthusiasm. The D minor quartet almost sounds Beethovenish, which is not surprising since Haydn had already begun to adopt a quasi-symphonic structure for the Op. 9 quartets.
Interestingly, I would have expected the second quartet on the disc (Op. 77 No. 2) to be even more Beethovenish, given that it was the last quartet that Haydn wrote and dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz (later a patron of Beethoven), but it sounded quite Mozartean to my ears.
Both are excellent performances on an excellent recording, matching the sonics and excitement of the earlier album, so please refer to my review of the earlier album for further comments.