David Wolf wrote:

>For years I have searched for a particular CD version of the Budapest
>recordings of Beethoven's Late Quartets.  Although I now have two different
>performances by the Budapest of these, (the Bridge set, which is of early
>40s performances, and the Columbia Masterworks version of the later 40s,)
>the one I really want is the recording made in either the late 50s or early
>60s (in stereo) which was issued by Columbia as MS5 677.  I have this set
>on vinyl, and have loved it for thirty years.  ...

While you have apparently derived much pleasure from listening to those
Library of Congress Budapest performances in stereo, your feeling is
apparently not univerally shared.  The well respected music critic B.H.
Haggin, who admittedly was occasionally eccentric and always outspoken in
his opinions, but who was a fan of the Budapest String Quartet, described
these performances, contrasted with the earlier ones to which you refer, as
having undergone a "deterioration in tone and intonation and even in the
treatment of the music [that] reached the point where the playing was not
only musically unsatisfying but unpleasant to listen to."

Walter Meyer