大象传媒

Haydn Plus One. A week of music by Haydn linked to other composers opens with Meta4 playing Haydn's String Quartet Op 64 No 2 and Bartok's Quartet No 5. Recorded at LSO St Lukes in London

Haydn: String Quartet in B minor, Op 64 No 2
Bart贸k: String Quartet No 5

Meta4

Haydn's reputation as a 'composer's composer' may not do full justice to his music's warming mixture of ingenuity, humanity and sheer attractiveness, but it accurately reflects the esteem in which he has always been held by his contemporaries and successors. This concert is the first in a series of four recorded at LSO St Lukes in London, in which compositions by him in genres in which he was a seminal figure are placed alongside works by later composers who also held those genres dear. Of these, it is surely the string quartet that Haydn is most closely identified; one of his later examples is paired here with a masterpiece from perhaps the 20th century's most searching quartet-cycle, Bart贸k's Fifth.

They are played by the Finnish quartet Meta4, former members of the Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme.