An Ensemble Equal to Haydn’s Best Tricks

* * * 1/2 HAYDN: THE COMPLETE STRING QUARTETS The Angeles String Quartet Philips

Between 1757 and 1799, Franz Joseph Haydn completed 67 string quartets. Every one, even the lightweight early divertimentos, has something in it to enjoy. Many of the last quartets are masterpieces. Not only is Haydn’s the first great collection of string quartets, it is also the largest by any noteworthy composer. Indeed, no one has ever come close to writing this many quartets of such high quality. The accomplishment is downright staggering.

Cranking out excellent and innovative string quartets was not all Haydn did, of course. The first composer to demonstrate the potential of the symphony, he wrote 104 of them, again with more masterpieces in the genre than anyone else. Then there are his series of piano sonatas, string trios, concertos, operas, masses and two great oratorios.

But the string quartet was special for Haydn. He was the first composer to make a concerted effort to write for two violins, viola and cello, maybe the first to write any pieces at all for this grouping. (Musicology is not exact on this point, but we are glad to cede the invention to Haydn, considering the glory he brought the ensemble.) More important, though, is the value of this contribution. The symphony would have undoubtedly developed without Haydn’s example, but not so likely the string quartet. However much the string quartet suits traditional four-voice harmony (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), the homogeneity of four-string instruments was not, before Haydn, considered particularly interesting.

Thanks to Haydn, however, Mozart was inspired to develop a rich quartet style, and Beethoven discovered that the string quartet could handle his otherwise impossibly visionary needs. Through Beethoven, Haydn bequeathed us the Bartok, Shostakovich, Schoenberg and Carter string quartets. But he also bequeathed us Kronos, which has shown that the string quartet suits rockers, native African musicians, avant-gardists and just about everyone else as well as it suited Haydn.

And it suited Haydn so well because he was a trickster.

So hold on to your hats: The Angeles String Quartet’s long-awaited set of the complete Haydn quartets--five years in the making, with more than 30 hours of music on 21 discs of the 67 quartets that we are certain Haydn wrote (there are some spurious ones left out) and the two movements of a 68th that he never finished--has finally arrived. It is full of mischief. And beauty. The playing is smooth, sophisticated, sumptuous. There has never before been a completely satisfying set of the complete Haydn string quartets. Now there is, and to immerse oneself in it can be a nearly indescribable pleasure.

Most of us don’t know most of the Haydn quartets very well. The late quartets are relatively famous, as are the more colorful early and middle ones, particularly those that accumulated over the years such titles as “The Frog,” “The Razor,” “The Lark” and “The Emperor.” (Thank goodness we’ve stopped calling Haydn’s last quartet “Wait ‘til the Clouds Roll By.”) These titles, however, are deceiving. Haydn can be wonderfully descriptive in his music when he wants to be; you can’t miss the birdsong or the clattering horse hooves. You won’t need any help with the joke at the end of “The Joke.”

But this is just one side of Haydn’s cleverness, a cleverness that goes much deeper into the very essence of musical language. What is most remarkable about the string quartets is that, for the most part, they are about nothing at all except the language of music. And listening through the set of them, we hear a version of that language begin to form. The British composer Robin Holloway has called Haydn the purest of all composers.

Haydn wrote his string quartets in spurts often separated by as much as a decade, and they come as if messages from a career. The Opus 1 and Opus 2 sets of six quartets each, product of a wiseacre composer in his late 20s, played endless witty tricks on the simplistic style of the 1850s (to the point of actually being accused of “debasing the art with comic fooling”). A decade later, Haydn jumped in with three more sets of six (Opus 9, 17 and 20), and here his rambunctious tricks with harmonies and rhythms took on a formidable dramatic power. With the Opus 20 quartets, the composer has essentially overthrown every trace of rococo foppishness. He began to develop what would become an increasingly conversational style among the players. Here, as it is in the dialogues between improvising jazz musicians or between a sitarist and a tabla player in the Indian raga, we get the vital sense of what nonverbal communication means.

Dropping in on Haydn in his later sets, we notice the influence of a decade spent writing comic operas in six quartets of Opus 33 and their more popular style; we see a restless middle-age composer in his Opus 50, 54, 55, 64, 71 and 74 sets, when he has become a complete master of every little musical gesture and a composer able to build whole movements out of minimal material. By removing anything extraneous to his musical argument, Haydn became ever the more subtle and subversive prankster, using his phenomenal control of the materials to get away with his increasingly outrageous tricks of harmony and rhythm.

The quartets of his old age--the six of Opus 76 and two of Opus 77, written in the final years of the 18th century--are in some ways the boldest of all, revealing a new freedom within classical forms, heightened drama and the sense that Haydn could do just about anything he wants.

But one of the things that Haydn never wanted to do was tell you how he felt. His quartets are not without emotion, and certainly Haydn could invent lyrical slow movements when he wanted to. But these quartets are never as emotionally outspoken as are the quartets of his immediate successors, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Haydn was clearly more interested in the language of music than of his own heart, in his intellect more than in his feelings. This sense of personal withdrawal is what has made Haydn’s quartets less favored by the general public than his Romantic followers. But that withdrawal is also what allowed Haydn to develop the medium in such a way that it could be suitable for anything anybody wanted to do with it. This was the great trickster’s greatest trick.

The Angeles set does a very good job of giving us the supple side of Haydn. At first, it might seem that the L.A.-based ensemble does too good a job in performances more notable for polish than character. The recorded ambience of a Northern California church (St. Stephen’s in Belvedere), which has a lovely airiness but is more diffuse than the usual close-up dry studio sound of most string quartet recordings, can also contribute to this reaction.

But spend time with this set, and you find that the quartet’s elasticity and the acoustic sweetness make an ideal combination that will not tire the ear. Some collectors still might prefer the Alban Berg Quartet for its depth, the Takacs for its intensity, the Carmina for its fresh drive, or a period group for its old-world colors. But the fact that the Angeles imposes less means there is all the more pure Haydn to relish. And it is not as if the players lack spirit, humor, finesse and flair. The solos of first violinist Kathleen Lenski dazzle.

There are a few minor caveats. The Philips set was packaged on the cheap. The notes are skimpy, and there are careless mistakes, such as mislabeling the Opus 50 quartets on the sleeve of the 12th CD as Opus 54. But Philips passes on its economies to the consumer, with the set priced, at less than $150, practically in the super-budget category. And what could be truer to Haydn, who did so much with so little in his string quartets and who drove a hard (and not always honest) bargain, than a very good deal? *