Youthful Take On Core Repertoire

The current monthly cover disk from BBC Music magazine features the young Czech players of the Pavel Haas Quartet, members of the BBC new Generation Artists scheme. They have already released commercial recordings of Czech repertoire which have been very well received and on this disk they play three Beethoven quartets, one each from his early, middle and late periods. The booklet notes make clear that in some ways these distinctions are arbitrary but the PHQ seem comfortable in each of them. These are not performances in aspic, they take some liberties with tempo and dynamics and these might not be "library" choices for the pieces performed ( Op 18 no 4, Op 135 and Op 95 Quartetto Serioso ) But since I already own a complete cycle of the quartets by the Takacs Quartet, I am happy to have these as an addition and look forward to hearing what repertoire they tackle next.