Haydn: The Last Three String Quartets

Album review

This fine album by the Pražák Quartet was recorded in Prague in 2020 and is dedicated to Pierre-Emile Barbier, the tireless talent scout with a passion for music who passed away in 2018. He founded the Praga label to support the publication of the many rich recordings made by Czech radio stations. This record is a fitting tribute to this extraordinary character, who would undoubtedly have loved this luminous interpretation of Haydn's final three quartets, namely Opus 77 for the first two and Opus 103 for the last one, which was left unfinished by Haydn as his health deteriorated (1803).

Written after the publication of the six Quartets Op. 18 by his pupil Beethoven, these three final scores (the set was supposed to consist of six, as was customary at the time) offer one more illustration of Haydn's melodic verve and impeccable architecture. They contain a mixture of rigour and freedom: a veritable "organisation of delirium" as musicologist Marc Vignal put it. Haydn only completed the first two movements of Opus 103, unwittingly concluding his extensive creative career with this tormented, chromatic minuet in D minor which was 'as novel as a page by Schubert or Brahms'. Haydn kept on putting off the publication of this final quartet, convinced that he would one day be able to give it a final touch before profound aphasia prevented him from fulfilling his wish... © François Hudry/Qobuz