The Lindsays - Haydn: The 3 String Quartets Op.54 "Tost I" (1995)

If you like big and bold chamber music, with some tender and dignified moments inbetween, in equally bold and big performances, then this disc will answer all your needs.
Forget about traversing Haydn's quartets before Op 54. Start here, with this set, where he (at last!) unbuttoned his shirt and created the highest form in classical music. These players and this disc does 100 per cent justice to that!
Though these quartets were written as a display card for Tost, Haydn's fiddler colleague, there is I think a little too much focus on the first violin of Peter Cropper who takes no prisoners in the high and exuberant passages. The instruments are all Strads and the like, tuned (thankfully) to normal concert pitch. You will not hear finer string playing in this respect.