Haydn String Quartets

I agree with James Reel and the musicians he cites on the value of Haydn quartets. Robert Schumann told Clara that his three quartets were as good as Haydn. Considering that Schumann was very familiar with quartets of Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn inter alia, this is significant. (Incidentally, the three Schumann quartets are marvelous, very enjoyable to play and hear).
Two of my annoyances with the Peters edition are the meaningless numbers at the top and the lack of Opus numbers on the quartets in Vols. 3 and 4. It happens that the opus numbers are chronological. The original edition of the quartets was in two volumes. The editors arranged them arbitrarily, numbering from 1 to 83. Whether from marketing considerations or complaints about the bulk of the two volumes, the publisher decided to put them out in four volumes. Here the editors chose 30 of 83 as the renowned on the basis that they were the most beautiful and representative, but they kept the top numbers from the two volume edition. It is irritating to have a player identify a late quartet as "number 13" and an early one as "number 71. Two of the quartets dubbed renowned are not by Haydn at all. The six of Opus 3 are attributed to Romanus Hofstetter, (One of these includes the famous "Haydn Serenade). One writer of a book on chamber music stated that the so-called renowned quartets are far superior to the others. Anyone following this diktat misses some marvelous music.