Amazon.comThough this celebrated Italian quartet reached the apex of its international recording career in the 1970s with the Philips label, its earlier EMI recordings show the quartet before its supersuave exterior gloss that made it the polar opposite of the Juilliard String Quartet. Those who feel the Italians became bland may find these EMI recordings to their liking. Taped between 1956 and 1959, they're more pointed and descriptive--they'd have to be to deal with Haydn's picturesque effects in Op. 33 No. 3 ("The Bird")--and they capture Schubert's youthful rawness in String Quartet in C, D. 32. The two Mozart quartets, K. 156 and K. 458 ("The Hunt"), however, look forward to the best element of Quartetto Italiano's later style with entrancing treatment of slow movements. --David Patrick Stearns