**** Budapest String Quartet

BUDAPEST STRING QUARTET (three separate CDs)

(Bridge)

In 1940, after performing there on and off for two years, the Budapest String Quartet became Quartet-in-Residence at the Library of Congress, a position they kept for 22 years. Their concerts were special because they performed on a unique set of Stradivari instruments that were not allowed off the premises. Bridge Records has recently acquired the rights to the Library's archives, where the recordings of these live performances have been languishing for half a century.

A high point on one of the discs is from the Budapest's official opening concert, August 3, 1940: Haydn's radiant Lark Quartet. This and Haydn's late Opus 76 No. 5, from 1941, show the Budapest players at their best -- refined but energetic, lean but full of rhythmic grace and the most delicate nuance of phrasing. Beethoven's Piano Quartet and the Hungarian Rondo from Haydn's G-major Trio (an encore piece), from a 1955 concert, are a little rougher but have the benefit of that master chamber pianist, the late Mieczyslaw Horszowski. In the Brahms Piano Quintet and the Schubert Trout Quintet, on a separate disc, the pianist is no less than George Szell, around the time he was appointed conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. How flexibly the Budapest adapted to such diverse ivory tickling as the exquisite lyricism of Horszowski and the classical restraint of Szell.

One of the most remarkable of these releases are three 1952 Rachmaninov performances: both of his rarely heard string quartets and the big Trio Élégique in D minor, with pianist Arthur Balsam -- luscious, insinuating works (the Trio sounds like Kurt Weill) from the 1890s, all composed before Rachmaninov turned 23. The Budapest never made studio recordings of Rachmaninov, so these forgotten gems of Russian Romanticism surely never had better performances.

-- Lloyd Schwartz