Aaron Rabushka wrote:

>For some of the Mozart string quartets (#23 and all six of the "Haydn"
>quartets) go ty the Melos Quartett-Stuttgart on DG. They do outstanding
>Schubert, too.

For thoe Mozart quartets I prefer the Amadeus and the Smetana (don't know
if they did them all) because they both do such an incredibly tragic K.421.
A big disappointment in Mozart I find the Mosaiques, surely one of the best
HIP-quartetes around and *great* in Haydn and the two Beethoven quartets
they recorded.  They seem to lose their way in Mozart and treat him like
Haydn whereas Mozart's *Haydn quartets* are Mozart's compositions and not
Haydn's.  As for the Melos Schubert, weren't they the first one (and maybe
the only one?) to do a complete set? I like that set as a complete set but
for each of the great last three quartets I can mention several ensembles
ho seem to probe much deeper IMO (I mean I can't *prove* that and can't
properly describe it in words although I might be able to explain it while
hearing it).

Philip