Hyacinthe Jadin, who died from tuberculosis in 1800 at the age of 24, made his name in Paris primarily as a pianist. But during his brief career he also published a dozen string quartets, dedicating his first set of three to Haydn. No right-minded young composer of quartets in the 1790s could afford to ignore Haydn’s example, of course; and his influence is especially apparent in the C major work from Op. 3 – indeed, the veiled, dark-toned minuet, with each instrument playing sotto voce on its lowest string, is frankly modelled on the corresponding movement of Haydn’s so-called Bird Quartet, Op. 33 No. 3. The finale, with its bagpipe effects, quasi-folk tunes and scraps of fugato, is also overtly Haydnesque, throwing in for good measure the odd allusion to the finale of Mozart’s Hunt Quartet. Haydn’s spirit, too, lies behind much of the E flat Quartet from Op. 2, especially in the shifting accents of the minuet and the harmonic deflexions of the outer movements, though the slow introduction is an unashamed tribute to that of Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet, at times quoting its model almost verbatim.
For all his indebtedness to his great Viennese predecessors, Hyacinthe Jadin does have a gift for graceful, shapely melody, often featuring ‘sighing’ appoggiaturas; and several moments, including the opening Allegro moderato of the C major piece, cultivate an appealing vein of early romantic melancholy. His quartet writing is usually assured and idiomatic, though despite the insert-note’s frequent references to Hyacinthe’s “dense counterpoint” true polyphonic writing is at a premium. What the music conspicuously lacks is Haydn’s and Mozart’s structural control, their mastery of long-term harmonic tensions: development sections often begin promisingly but then tend to run out of steam, so that the recapitulation (which Hyacinthe likes to begin with the second subject) rarely arrives with a true sense of dramatic necessity.
There is even less harmonic and contrapuntal tension in the F minor Quartet of c1814 by Hyacinthe’s elder brother Louis-Emmanuel, in his day a celebrated composer of operas comiques. This is a work in the mould of the then fashionable quatuor brillant, with the first violin launching into vapid figuration at the slightest provocation, particularly in the loosely constructed first movement, and the lower parts consigned to subservient dullness. In partial compensation, Louis-Emmanuel’s melodic invention does have an attractive wistful elegance, sometimes with a distinctive Gallic flavour, as in the ‘limping’ minuet, with its alternation of duple and triple time, and the fetching contredanse finale.
All three works receive eloquent advocacy from the Mosaiques, who confirm themselves as the most imaginative and technically finished of all period-instrument quartets. They neither inflate nor understate this music, playing with a subtle variety of colour and nuance, vital, pliant rhythms (rubato always beautifully judged) and a feeling for the precise expressive character of each movement. Christophe Coin takes his chances memorably in the trio of the C major and the Adagio of the E flat Quartet, while Erich Hobarth brings marvellous delicacy and panache to his solo forays in the F minor one. The recording is exemplary, and Nathalie Castanel’s note (not always happily translated – for example, “homonymous key” for “tonic major”) makes a vigorous, if at times understandably over-enthusiastic, case for the Jadin brothers.'