Haydn: String Quartets, Vol. 11 Op. 76

Haydn’s six quartets published as his Op.76 in 1799, and composed three years earlier, astonished listeners and commentators alike.

Composer: Franz Joseph Haydn
Artist: Buchberger Quartet

🎬🎮 These tracks are available for sync licensing in videos, films, TV shows, games, advertising, and more. For licensing inquiries: [email protected]

How on earth could a man advanced in years keep producing such extraordinary music, and show no sign of his creative faculties diminishing? No less a person than Charles Burney was taken aback by the stunning originality and daring of the Op.76 quartets. Writing to Haydn in 1799 he said ‘I’ve never received more pleasure from instrumental music: they are full of invention, fire, good taste, and new effects, and seem the production, not of a sublime genius who has written so much and so well already, but of one of highly-cultivated talents, who had expended none of his fire before.’

There was no doubt that Haydn had bettered his previous quartets. New in the Op.76 was the appearance of a distinctly Beethovenian scherzo. It is perhaps worth noting that just before Haydn completed these quartets, Beethoven had been his unruly pupil. The young man’s Op.1 trios, Op.18 quartets, and maybe the early drafts of the 1st Symphony, would have been known to Haydn, and, ever curious to develop new ideas, Haydn would have been attracted to the scherzo. The remarkable vision and scope of these quartets has placed them firmly among the greatest in the repertoire. The public has also embraced them, and the nicknames of some of them will be instantly recognisable to listeners – ‘Fifths’, ‘Emperor’ and ‘Sunrise’. The ‘Sunrise’ No.4, has been described by H.C. Robbins Landon as having one ‘of the greatest openings in chamber music’, and the Fantasia slow movement of No.6 as’ one of the boldest and most original movements in the whole eighteenth century’.

Tracklist:
String Quartet in G, Op. 76 No. 1:
00:00:00 I. Allegro con spirito
00:08:21 II. Adagio sostenuto
00:15:24 III. Menuet: Presto - Trio
00:17:54 IV. Finale: Allegro ma non troppo

String Quartet in D Minor, Op. 76 No. 2:
00:24:29 I. Allegro
00:33:50 II. Andante o più tosto allegretto
00:39:31 III. Menuet: Allegro - Trio
00:42:25 IV. Finale: vivace assai

String Quartet in C, Op. 76 No. 3:
00:46:40 I. Allegro
00:56:55 II. Poco adagio. Cantabile
01:03:20 III. Menuet: Allegro - Trio
01:08:10 IV. Finale: Presto

String Quartet in B-Flat, Op. 76 No. 4:
01:13:57 I. Allegro con spirito
01:22:45 II. Adagio
01:28:24 III. Menuet: Allegro - Trio
01:32:31 IV. Finale: Allegro ma non troppo - Più allegro - Più Presto

String Quartet in D, Op. 76 No. 5:
01:36:58 I. Allegretto - Allegro
01:41:59 II. Largo: Cantabile e mesto
01:48:55 III. Menuet: Allegro - Trio
01:51:32 IV. Finale: Presto

String Quartet in E-Flat, Op. 76 No. 6:
01:55:18 I. Allegretto - Allegro
02:01:56 II. Fantasia: Adagio
02:08:43 III. Menuet: Presto - AlternatIVo
02:12:08 IV. Finale: Allegro spiritoso

📲 Follow us on Social media: @BrilliantClassics