Unlike his great contemporary Mozart, who died at 35 in 1791, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) lived long enough to be feted as a musical colossus in his own lifetime. Writing in the influential, Leipzig-based Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1801, Johann Karl Friedrich Triest explains: all the composers of symphonies and quartets lag behind the man who has plied his craft for almost an entire half century with ever new, inexhaustible, genuinely amazing power, and became the greatest benefactor of German instrumental music. Johann Ferdinand Ritter von Schnfeld, author of A Yearbook of the Music of Vienna and Prague in 1796, holds Haydn in similarly high esteem, waxing lyrical about his string quartets: [they] are full of bewitching harmonies, and have this special quality of immediately attracting ones attention, holding it and moving on, as in a labyrinth, through flowering meadows, past babbling brooks, alongside roaring streams.
01. String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 20 No. 3, Hob. III:33: I. Allegro con spirito 5:51
02. String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 20 No. 3, Hob. III:33: II. Minuet. Allegretto – Trio 4:53
03. String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 20 No. 3, Hob. III:33: III. Poco adagio 7:43
04. String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 20 No. 3, Hob. III:33: IV. Allegro molto 5:47
05. String Quartet in C Major, Op. 74 No. 1, Hob. III:72: I. Allegro moderato 7:08
06. String Quartet in C Major, Op. 74 No. 1, Hob. III:72: II. Andantino grazioso 5:38
07. String Quartet in C Major, Op. 74 No. 1, Hob. III:72: III. Minuet. Allegro – Trio 4:44
08. String Quartet in C Major, Op. 74 No. 1, Hob. III:72: IV. Finale. Vivace 5:53
09. String Quartet in G Major, Op. 76 No. 1, Hob. III:75: I. Allegro con spirito 5:53
10. String Quartet in G Major, Op. 76 No. 1, Hob. III:75: II. Adagio sostenuto 6:21
11. String Quartet in G Major, Op. 76 No. 1, Hob. III:75: III. Minuet. Presto – Trio 2:59
12. String Quartet in G Major, Op. 76 No. 1, Hob. III:75: IV. Finale. Allegro ma non troppo 6:11