content: The St. Lawrence String Quartet may not be as well known as, say, the Emerson, whose traversal of the entire Shostakovich quartet canon is a must-have. It is hard to imagine, though, a better taste of the early and middle quartets than this selection of three -- at least until Cuarteto Casals commits its interpretation of No. 8, which we heard for the second time in Santa Fe this past August, to disc. But this review is about the St. Lawrence, and their No. 8 is also profoundly to be admired, with No. 3 and No. 7 right up there.