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

I have the Tokyo Quartet for Beethoven and Alban Berg for the others. The only drawback to the Emerson Quartet is they record for Deutsche Grammophon. In general, I don't care for how DG's recordings sound.

For the Beethoven, Cleveland Quartet. ( By the way they do one of the best Debussy/Ravel) Can't make any high recomendation for the Mozart, maybe the Budapest S. Q. on #'s 14-19. There is the Heutling Quartet on EMI import from France. Not sure how they sound, but you get the complete quartets + 4 quintets. Tweekerman

I heartedly second Swklein's recommendation of recordings by the Mosaiques Quartet. Their Haydn is excellent, as are the recordings by the Kodály Quartet on Naxos.

My recommendations:
HAYDN
String Quartets Op. 76, Nos. 1-6
Kodály Quartet (Naxos)
Mosaïques Quartet (Naive Astrée)

BEETHOVEN
Tokyo or Emerson or Alban Berg Qts

MOZART
String Quartets, K387, K421(Haydn Quartets, disc 1)
Mosaiques Quartet (Naive Astrée)

String Quartets, K464, K465 ("Dissonance") (Haydn Quartets, disc 2)
Mosaiques Quartet (Naive Astrée)

I'm a little surprised that these recordings have not been recommended yet, but for the Beethoven String Quartets, I think the Guarneri Quartet's recordings are in a class by themselves.

There's also an interesting recording of the Mozart Quartets by the American String Quartet. The recordings were done using the "Axlerod" Stradivari instruments that are housed at the Smithsonian. The playing, and the sound, is fantastic.

Just my two cents. Regardless, I hope you enjoy listening to all of these great, great works.

I must agree: Guarneri Qt. is also great for Beethoven. I have some of their LPs, but not the CDs.