Quartet recording in past years has often been a slip-shod business. Victor especially seems contented just to get the sound down on wax and let it go at that. Not so, however, with Columbia's Budapest Quartet series. Here are four players, each a first rate soloist in his own right, welded together into the kind of unit you find in a good crew or ball team. Other quartets have the same precision, and occasionally the same warmth of tone, but the Budapest people have that extra something that brings the music to life and gives it symphonic dimensions.

Chamber music, unlike orchestral works, loses practically nothing in the process of broadcasting or recording. Quartets weren't written for performance in big barns like Symphony Hall where the body of tone gets drowned before it reaches the audience. They were intended for private after-dinner gatherings, and the next best thing to playing them yourself is a good broadcast or recording that can fill the room with the living string tone. Even with the best equipment, a "canned" symphony loses something by reproduction. The dynamics of a quartet, however, are perfectly suited to the normal range of a loudspeaker.

Luckily, the Budapest Quartet isn't hiding its light under a bushel. They can be heard every Sunday morning over some Columbia stations from 11:05 till 12, and Columbia has just released their excellent reading of the Beethoven 11th, or "serioso" quartet. They are at their best in this playing of Beethoven's sombre, powerful music, and the recording is highly recommended to anyone who still thinks quartets dull or stuffy.

Tonight in Sanders Theatre, Alexander Schneider, one of the Budapest Quartet's violinists, and Ralph Kirkpatrick '31 will play the second in their series of Bach and Mozart sonatas for violin and harpsichord. There is no excuse for not going to one of these concerts. Both artists are masters of their instruments, and no recordings of these sonatas, played as they should be played, with harpsichord accompaniment, are available.