WGBH has hosted many string quartets in its performance studio. Hear three of the best, playing music by Joseph Haydn. Two hundred years ago — May 31, 1809, to be exact — Joseph Haydn died at age 76.

For string quartet lovers, a new release by the Takács Quartet is always reason to celebrate. In recent years, their vividly intense recordings of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, not to mention Bartok ...

Is the Bay Area really the center of classical music disruption, the region’s favorite term? Last week offered some reasons to think so. There was the news that the San Francisco Symphony had made Esa ...

When Haydn completed his Six Quartets, Op 50, in 1787, they triggered a Europe-wide bidding war among music publishers. As well they might: this was Haydn’s first full-scale set of quartets since the ...

In its recitals at Wigmore Hall the Doric String Quartet has shown an affinity for Haydn. The set of six quartets, Op.20, written when the composer was 40, catch him in the white heat of experiment, ...

Two years ago, Haydn's bicentenary caused many to take him a lot more seriously. The New Zealand String Quartet swept us through 20 quartet movements from Opus 1 to 103, revealing just why Haydn is ...

The String Quartet version op. 51 Hob XX/1B is the most often performed and recorded. But it is not the original and only presumably (though not certainly) a transcription of his own – as opposed to ...

Too broke to buy a viola? Don’t let that stop you from making beautiful music. Sometimes, playing in a string quartet can get repetitive. Here’s how you can mix things up a bit. Violist Efdal Altun ...

London Haydn Quartet Hyperion CDA 67877 (2 CDs for the price of 1)**** This may be the third volume in the London Haydn Quartet's survey of the quartets of Haydn, but it's also the point at which, ...