Jared wrote: yes, the Haydn SQs are utterly magnificent, but they are a labour of love, which took me an entire summer.... all 22 disks of them. Personally, I wouldn't start with the Haydn SQs, because someone completely new to the form, they would probably come across a bit 'samey'. Although I am in no way initiated into these things, I would say the Haydn's are 'Connoisseur's SQs.... definitely the Mozart 'Haydn' SQs before the Haydn ones... imho.
Remember that Simon is a musician and as Haydn defined the structure of the genre the technique, structure and the four voices come through exceedingly well in his quartets. I would not suggest for a moment that he buys the entire body of these works to start but Naxos do an extremely good set of individual CDs performed by the Kodaly Quartet which I am sure could be picked up quite inexpensively.
