Sunday Night is... Haydn String Quartet Haydn op. 76 No 5 - 2nd Mvt

Largo. Cantabile e mesto - Ysaye String Quartet from France - Guillaume Sutre and Luc-Marie Aguera, violins / Miguel da Silva, viola / Yovan Markovitch, cello

For my money the string quartet is the high point of western music: it has a crystalline quality at best, the ideas fully felt through and articulated. When it is sweet, as this is, it remains disciplined and unsentimental. Sweetness too exists, especially when underlined by gravity. It was the late Matt Simpson who introduced me to Haydn's String Quartets. The sitting room was a wall of LPs arranged, as I remember, alphabetically by composer.

It's like the soul being tenderly drawn out through the guts.