These impeccable recordings of Haydn’s final string quartets open with an earlier work, Op 42 from 1785, which acts as a profoundly moving scene-setter—and a reminder of the mastery the composer exercised in a form of which he is regarded the father. The performance of the Adagio here is one of the most beautiful I have heard, and the Takács Quartet take the Presto at a breakneck gallop. Their readings of the two Op 77 quartets are no less insightful and precise—the Presto in the G major is thrillingly effervescent—and the two completed movements of the Op 103, heartbreaking in their evocation both of Haydn’s mortality and his undimmed verve, draw from the Takács performances as wonderful and sonorous as you could hope for.