Beethoven: The Late String Quartets - CD

ENGLISH

<br><br>Ludwig van Beethoven’s late string quartets have the power to shock the listener to this day. The music is modern, uncompromising, touching emotions that hitherto no other composer had done – this is tough, forward looking music from a composer whose relentless questioning of and pushing against musical conventions had already marked him out. Only the then-unknown Franz Schubert was composing string quartets and sonatas that can stand on equal terms with Beethoven’s last works in these genres.<br /> <br /> Twelve years elapsed after writing the Op.95 Quartet before Beethoven returned to the form, prompted by a request from Prince Galitzin. That short angry quartet should have sounded warning bells that change was on the way, and indeed it was for Beethoven was entering his ‘late period’, which produced the visionary late quartets, the last four piano sonatas, the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. The scale of the Opp. 130, 131 and 132 quartets is huge – six or seven movements taxing the players to the extreme, and taking the listener on an emotional and intellectual roller coaster ride. The original finale of Op.130 was to be a gigantic fugue lasting over 16 minutes, which was accepted even by the composer as being too much for the players after an already long work, and he published it as a separate work. The new shorter finale originally was intended as the (non-choral) fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony.<br /> <br /> Other information<br /> - Recorded in 1972-77.<br /> - Booklet notes.<br />