As far as can be gleaned from the catalogues, this is the only currently available version of the six Apponyi Quartets apart from the Pro Arte's quite recently reissued eight-LP EMI Pathe Marconi References boxed set recorded in the 1930s (290604-3, 3/86). In the accompanying booklet (almost as lavish with space as those I remember in my teens) we're told that the commissioner of the set, Count Antal Apponyi, was a music-loving court chamberlain (and connection of the Esterhazy family) chosen by Haydn as one of his sponsors when applying for admission to a masonic lodge. The writer, Laszlo Somfai, then lengthily unfolds evidence in support of his belief that the first two of the six quartets were composed in 1792, not 1793 as usually claimed. Be that as it may. All that matters for the average music-lover, I think, is to know that these works stem from the period between Haydn's two London visits in 1791 and 1794, when he was a mature man in his middle sixties much stimulated by the fuller sonorities of London orchestras after the comparatively modest forces he had lived with at Esterhaza.
I've rarely been more aware than here of the necessity of sitting in just the right place to get the best out of a recording. Crouched over the fire on a cold day, with my back to my speakers, I was initially disappointed. But correctly positioned I found that not only the instruments themselves acquired a new three-dimensional clarity and tonal bloom, but that the playing itself seemed to grow in personal conviction and character. Even so, as an ensemble I would still describe the Tatrai Quartet as old-world rather than new—that's to say comfortably reconciled to familiar paths rather than arrestingly questing in approach. Some of their allegro tempo is questionably cautious, not least in the finales of Op. 71 No. 3 in E flat, and still more Op. 74 No. 3 in G minor (which you'd scarcely guess here was responsible for the work's nickname, The Rider). Sometimes I felt they wasted a few opportunities for sharp dynamic contrast, especially when used by Haydn to underline startling surprises of key, as, for instance, in the octave leaps in the recapitulation of the first movement of Op. 71 No. 2, or the remarkable tonal plunges in the Menuetto (and Trio) of Op. 74 No. 1. Sometimes, too, I felt that phrasing—not least from the leader—lacked the intimate personal inflection that allows you to listen to music as if with new ears. But these well-balanced and integrated players never draw attention to themselves though dizzy display, or finicky point-making, or indeed special pleading of any kind. And as I've already intimated, on my second hearing of these mellow-toned discs I found that the group's unaffected wholesomeness and sincerity paid dividends of its own.'