Search - Buchberger String Quartet :: Complete String Quartets (W/ CD-Rom) (Box)

An excellent complete set

Mark Ringer | New York | 08/27/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The Buchberger are a German quartet with decades of experience with this vast collection of works. Their style is direct and dramatic. They are unafraid to foreground Haydn's peasant elements and his frequent anticipations of Beethoven's style. Gentler writing is played simply and with heart. The sound is superbly focused so the part writing is clearly audible (unlike the occasionally muddy sound afforded the painfully bland Angeles cycle on Philips). Their intonation is always clean, unlike the sometimes scratchy or strained sounds of the otherwise good Tatrai and Aeolian accounts. In short, this is as good a complete set as is on the market. It appeared (inexcusably minus 3 discs!) in Brilliant's "Haydn edition", so it is good to have it in a complete format. Those who enjoyed the Buchbergers in that larger collection can also purchase the incomplete opuses (54, 50, 76) individually."