This box brings together discs, recorded between 1992 and 1995, that have already been issued separately. Eight masterpieces, only needing some Beethoven to make a perfect introduction to the classical Viennese Quartet, in lively, assured performances that are clearly and brightly recorded. The best recording and, I think, the best playing comes on the Schubert disc, where the Prazak’s excellent sense of rhythm and meticulous attention to dynamics is allied to a high level of musical understanding. The Andante of Death and the Maiden is especially convincing, a flowing tempo sustained throughout and the first violin happy, when appropriate, to retire to a decorative role. The Scherzo of D810 and the Minuet in D804 are just as fine. But elsewhere the Prazak are, compared with the Quartetto Italiano, rather superficial interpreters. The Italians’ tempos may sometimes be on the slow side, but in the opening Allegro moderato of D804, for instance, their intense commitment to the music leads to a performance that is touching and profoundly direct in a way that the Prazak, with their more flowery vibrato and fiercer attacks, can’t match.
For the Mozart, the Petersen Quartet, benefiting from a warmer, more spacious recording, offer performances that are freer, more decisively shaped and more involving. The Prazak are beautifully poised but their approach to the music is more literal, so that, for example, the expressive melodic accents in K589’s Larghetto sound overdone and harsh. In the Haydn, however, it’s the Prazak that appear the more imaginative, compared to the Kodaly Quartet – the places in the minor-key finales of the First and Third Quartets where the music turns back to the major key are both beautifully done. The recording, too, is more vivid, if slightly edgy (the Naxos sound is a bit woolly). But the Kodaly have the more finely integrated tone, avoid the Prazak’s excessive accents, and often play with more feeling (the wonderful Adagio of Op. 76 No. 1, for example).
In short, there’s some splendid playing, but it’s not quite a top recommendation.'