Joseph Haydn: String Quartets Op. 74 & Folk Music from Scotland

If Haydn’s Op. 76 string quartets are the towering peaks of his writing in the form, his Op. 71 quartets, written four years earlier in 1793, are their foothills — equally wry and nimble, but a tad less complex. Scotland’s Maxwell Quartet (who have no doubt clambered up their fair share of braes without bows in their hands) scramble across Haydn’s rollicking terrain with alacritous ease and a brazen, yet inviting sound. The rustic arrangements of Scottish folk tunes that intersperse the three quartets are canny palate-cleansers, smoothing the album’s pace, deepening its dimensions, and reinforcing Haydn’s deep debt to Central European folk forms. Ignore their rip-snorting send-up of legendary fiddler James Scott Skinner at your own peril.