Arod Quartet: Haydn

The Strad Issue: February 2026

Description: Much to impress, except for a tendency for overplay Haydn’s wit

Musicians: Arod Quartet

Works: Haydn: Six String Quartets, op.76

Catalogue number: ERATO 2173287521 (2 CDs)

Three chords as the quartet clears its collective throat at the opening of op.76 no.1, and then the players introduce themselves one by one. Their blend feels innate, their coordination is flawless. Tempos are on the brisk side but the Arod players always resist making it sound like a scramble, even in Haydn’s most fingery passages. Slow movements have ample warmth, especially in the chromatics of the Fifth and Sixth Quartets, but without sinking into sentimentality or schmaltz.

The musicians play 18th-century instruments with a modern set-up but with Tourte-style bows, which, they say, grant them a greater degree of flexibility and lightness. Flexibility, certainly – they take a markedly individual approach to dynamics, pulse and agogics, lingering perhaps a little too lovingly, for example, each time the ‘Sunrise’ Quartet’s opening music returns, robbing it a little of its flow.

They play about with rhythms, too, often pulling up on sforzandos before tumbling onto the next beat: cheeky once or twice but predictable and wearing when it happens time after time. The slides between notes in the finale of the ‘Fifths’ tip too easily from cheeky to cliché.

When these players really lean into the energy of the music and let it unfold without interference, though, it really goes with a swing, as in the finale of the Fifth Quartet. But second-guessing Haydn’s rhythmic games in the Minuet of the Fifth or the finale of the Sixth fatally undermines his humorous intent.

A note to young quartets in this repertoire: Haydn’s jokes are funnier than yours.

DAVID THREASHER