The Lindsay’s vulgar, abusive, seedy-toned, badly tuned, harshly recorded, bull-in-a-china-shop approach to the first three of Haydn’s Op. 76 quartets turns up again in this second installment, containing quartets Nos. 4-6. Initially, I had hoped for something better: the “Sunrise” Quartet actually goes rather well, its opening gently luminous, the second movement adagio appropriately hymn-like. But it’s all downhill from there. I can’t imagine what these formerly fine musicians think they’re doing, inflicting themselves on the music in such a fashion. The playing is totally unequalized: when first violinist Peter Cropper plays the syncopated accents in the E-flat quartet finale’s development section, he might as well be doing Bartók, but when viola and cello have the same passage moments later, it hardly registers at all. They attack every forte as though Haydn wrote “fortissimo”, with sharp staccato jabs, turning the outer movements of the two last quartets in the series into hideous instrumental boxing matches. I can only assume that the adulation these players have received in the UK over the years has gone to their collective heads. Their “sound” has become undisciplined, unmusical, and unworthy of the reputation they have worked so long and hard to establish. The rest of the musical world should tell them so: perhaps it’s not too late. [9/13/2000]
