Also highly praised has been the CD of early vocal music entitled Lamentations from the Oxford Camerata under Jeremy Summerly (8.550572), that of solo guitar music played by Jason Vieaux (8.553449), and -- rather surprisingly -- some of Bruckner's early symphonies, notably Nos: 2 and 3, conducted by Georg Tintner (8.554006 and 8.553454).
The recordings of all of Haydn's string quartets, played by the Kodaly Quartet, are also widely admired, with the Penguin Guide to Classical CDs giving rosettes, its highest accolade, to the six Opus 76 quartets (8.550314 and 8.550315), but warmly welcoming the entire 23 CD collection.
Also highly recommended is the CD titled English String Music, played by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta under Richard Studt (8.550823). This contains a particularly compelling version of Britten's early Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge in which a series of traditional dance measures are treated with an almost brutal contempt, with the composer kicking them into new life while simultaneously disdaining their inherently platitudinous nature. The composer's early anger at his own homosexuality in the context of the 1930s can be sensed in this extraordinary music.
Any label can be considered as having come of age when it starts to have deleted items. Thus Naxos's wonderful version of Mozart's string quartets known by the nicknames The Hunt and Dissonance, played by the Moyzes Quartet from Slovakia, is unfortunately no longer listed. You still might see a copy -- if you do, snap it up; its number was 8.550105. Naxos's complete Mozart quartets, played by the Eder Quartet, were recorded in an over-reverberant church in Budapest and are unfortunately not to be recommend.
Mozart's piano concertos, on the other hand, are very attractively played on Naxos by the Hungarian pianist Jeno Jando. The same pianist has also recorded all Beethoven's piano sonatas for Naxos. As just about every concert pianist has also tackled these, the competition is too strong for Naxos to win many plaudits here. But Jeno Jando is an infectiously enthusiastic artist, and you couldn't possibly go wrong with him at this price. It's true he's given to grunts and moans here and there, but so, come to that, was Glenn Gould.
One disadvantage Naxos may paradoxically labor under is some people's desire to pay high prices for things, not liking to be seen to own products that friends will know didn't cost them much. On the other hand, many people now know from their own experience that CDs cost next to nothing to copy, and so are becoming reluctant to pay high prices for them. In such a situation, labels such as Naxos can only go from strength to strength.
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