Mozart,Haydn,Beethoven String Quartets......

Scratch my vote on the cleveland quartet on Beethoven. For great sound recording and great performance the Naxos label, The Kodaly Quartet. The Tanayev Quartet plays excellent, but is "heavy" sounding vs the Kolady. The Kolady is more musical. Not sure, but i think Naxos has the complete Beethoven as a set. The Kolady does the complete Haydn , like 35 cd's!! Tweekerman

Wow...thanks to all...as usual...Audiogoners seem to really know their stuff...any thoughts on Schubert's "Death and the Maiden"? Also, as far as I know, Haydn pretty much perfected the genre...with Mozart and Beethoven following suite...are there are lesser known quartets that come to mind..I do have Borodin done by the Borodin quartet which is world class...any thoughts?

The Borodin by Borodin are indeed spectacular. For "Death and the Maiden" there are excellent recordings by the Emerson and Tokyo, and the best of all is the Busch Quartet from the 1930s (which can be found, or could once, on EMI/Angel CD: don't sweat the dated sound, it's surprisingly vivid). You might want to try the Brahms quartets (Alban Berg, Takacs are good), the Bartok (Tokyo, Emerson, best of all Vegh), the Janacek (Tokyo, Smetana). These are some of m favorites!

Also...anbody have the Smetana Quartet doing Mozart?...these were on the Denon label...and sound amazing...I wonder if they are still available...

Phase,

there is at least one Mozart/Smetana on the Testament label.