Between 1757 and 1799, Franz Joseph Haydn completed 67 string quartets. Every one, even the lightweight early divertimentos, has something in it to enjoy. Many of the last quartets are masterpieces.

Is the Bay Area really the center of classical music disruption, the region’s favorite term? Last week offered some reasons to think so. There was the news that the San Francisco Symphony had made Esa ...

Franz Joseph Haydn is revered by music lovers as the Father of the Symphony, and indeed he was the first figure to achieve greatness in that genre. But about the time he began writing symphonies, he ...

String quartets are the most intimate, the most personal, and sometimes the most powerful of musical communications, and, almost without exception, every major composer from Haydn to Philip Glass has ...

The Opus 20 string quartets by Haydn are breakthrough works that established the quartet style for generations. All four voices are equally important in a new, more emotional discourse that has left ...

That great 18th-century musical observer Charles Burney responded to Haydn's Op 76 quartets by describing them as being "full of invention, fire, good taste and new effects". The historically informed ...

Haydn was the first great composer of string quartets. He effectively put the new medium on the musical map and left a large body of high-quality work for it. But performers and listeners have always ...

The Auryn Quartet at the WGBH Studio in Boston. How do you transform four good players into an exquisite string quartet? Breathe. That's what the members of the Cologne-based Auryn Quartet told me ...