CD

Hollywood String Quartet, Beethoven Late Quartets (Testament, three CDs). Felix Slatkin, Leonard’s father, was a superbly gifted Heifetz-style violinist who served as concertmaster of the Twentieth-Century Fox orchestra and, after hours, led an ensemble of Hollywood studio players good enough to stand up to direct comparison with the Budapest Quartet. Their 1957 Capitol recordings of the late quartets of Beethoven, now available once again after a long hiatus, rank among the finest chamber-music recordings ever made. Rarely have Beethoven’s most sublime inward utterances been played with such awesome technical finish–or interpreted with such self-effacing seriousness (TT).