In their half-century of active life (1917-67), the Budapest Quartet naturally changed their personnel and, famously, their essential style when the founding leader Emil Hauser gave way to Joseph Roisman and the ensemble became Russian rather than Hungarian. These recordings date from the quartet’s American years, and at their best they are bright, fresh and ebullient, without the loss of a sense of European roots. The recordings show their age, however, with some pretty strong hiss and crackle that can bear, in particular, upon such moments as the opening of the finale of the Hunt, a performance which chases along nicely and cheerfully. So does the American Quartet, though there is room for a greater sense of wistfulness in the slower episodes and throughout the whole of the Lento.
Benny Goodman’s now classic performance of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet comes up well on reacquaintance, with an engaging simplicity that only threatens to be a little disengaged from the music in the Minuet. He takes the Larghetto rather fast, but his easy phrasing, and the light textures and easily paced rhythms of the strings, fully justify such a tempo. It is a pity that he never recorded the Brahms Quintet with them, as was apparently intended.'