String Quartets.

Haydn: String Quartets. Emerson String Quartet. DG 289 471 327-2 (3-disc set).

Was there any composer more cosmopolitan yet so light and bucolic as Joseph Haydn; any musician who so thoroughly encapsulated the 18th-century "Age of Reason" while at the same time infused so much Romantic joy and enthusiasm into his work? The quartets, of which he wrote a multitude, are as good an example as any of the man's delightful spirit.

The Emerson String Quartet, now celebrating their 25th year together and named for the American transcendental poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, continue their quest to record all of the composer's string output in a series of discs called "The Haydn Project." On this particular three-disc collection, they perform the Quartets in F minor, op. 20 no. 5; E flat major, op. 33 no. 2 "The Joke"; G major, op. 54, no. 1; D major, op. 64 no. 5 "The Lark"; G minor, op 74, no. 3 "The Rider"; D minor, op 76 no. 2 "Fifths"; and G major, op. 77 no. 1. What's more, the set contains a third, bonus disc ...