Home listening - Haydn string quartets galore

The Guardian 0

Contrasting sets from Amsterdam’s Dudok Quartet and the London Haydn Quartet prove illuminating. And Inside Music with Lucy Crowe

• Some 21 years separate the composition of two sets of Haydn string quartets recently released on separate labels, offering an opportunity to explore how the composer took the genre from private salon performance to concert hall status.

The exciting, Amsterdam-based Dudok Quartet choose three quartets from his 1772 set, Op 20: 2, 3, 5 (Resonus). Always alert to Haydn’s myriad caprices, they introduce some perfectly placed, sinuous phrasing in the third movement of No 3 in G minor, and real verve and colour in its brilliant allegretto.