Goldmund Quartet - Joseph Haydn: String Quartets, Op.1 No.1; Op.33 No.5; Op.77 No.1 (2016)

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Goldmund Quartet - Joseph Haydn: String Quartets, Op.1 No.1; Op.33 No.5; Op.77 No.1 (2016)

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This release is essentially a showcase for the Goldmund Quartet, and it’s hard not to warm to a young ensemble with its priorities so evidently in the right place. Haydn is still the indispensable touchstone for any serious quartet, and this debut disc covers both the beginning and end of Haydn’s quartet-writing career, with Op 33 No 5 falling almost exactly in the middle.

The Goldmunds make a beautiful sound, elegant and transparent, with a real sense that these four players are friends both on and off the concert platform. From the very opening of Op 1 No 1 – and the bright, buoyant feeling of an ensemble tugging at the leash – it’s clear that they take this music as seriously as it demands. Second violinist Pinchas Adt talks of ‘a lot of loving attention to detail’, and that’s a good summary of these performances: whether in the nutty pizzicatos of Op 1’s first Minuet, the artless opening smile of Op 33 No 5 or the refined blending of instrumental tone at the opening of Op 77 No 1’s great Adagio.

Reservations? Such intense carefulness can sometimes feel a little mannered – the group’s end-of-phrase ritenutos work better in the inner movements of Op 77 No 1 than the outer, and in the finale of Op 33 No 5 they’re positively arch. Don’t expect anything like the freewheeling fantasy that certain other emerging groups – Quatuor Zaïde (Op 50; NoMadMusic, 3/16), say – bring to Haydn. But these are still very attractive readings, and you’re never in any doubt that even the Goldmunds’ misjudgements are born of love.

Review by Richard Bratby, Gramophone

You have to return to Naxos’s early releases, twenty-five years and more ago, to find the first discs in the highly acclaimed Haydn quartet cycle from the Kodaly Quartet. Very similar in approach, this newcomer to the catalogue comes from the young award-winning, and much acclaimed German group, the Goldmund Quartet. They too concentrate on a refinement and elegance in performances that never come between the listener and composer. Throughout they have a warmth of tone; tempos are unhurried as they shape phrases with a natural musicality, while inner voices are given a more prominent role than we usually experience. Dynamics are never exaggerated, though I would have welcomed the greater range we hear from the recordings made by The Lindsays, where, for instance, they pointed out those explosive sforzandos in the scherzo of the Fifth of opus 55. Haydn certainly could be more than bucolic at times, but the Goldmund—like the Kodaly—look on his quartets in a wonderfully civilised musical world, where the slow movements are an exposition of mellow and beautiful playing. Apart from the Kodaly and the Lindsays—with their two extremely different approaches—there are so many outstanding recordings available that are played with technical perfection, and here I have to point to passing moments, especially in fast passages, where I question the leading violin intonation. Recorded in a spacious acoustic, the texture is clean and ideally delineated, the balance between instruments perfectly judged both by the performers and engineers.

Review by David Denton, David’s Review Corner

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Goldmund Quartet - Joseph Haydn: String Quartets, Op.1 No.1; Op.33 No.5; Op.77 No.1 (2016)

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Goldmund Quartet - Joseph Haydn: String Quartets, Op.1 No.1; Op.33 No.5; Op.77 No.1 (2016)

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Goldmund Quartet - Joseph Haydn: String Quartets, Op.1 No.1; Op.33 No.5; Op.77 No.1 (2016)

Close