Programme Guide

Beethoven’s second series of quartets, op. 59, was nothing less than a revolution: the first work in the triad, with a playing time of around 40 minutes, exceeded everything that had been called a “string quartet” up to that point.

The pieces were commissioned by the Russian diplomat Count Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky, who played the violin himself and was an art collector and a major patron of music. His Viennese palace, where violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, a friend of Beethoven, often played, offered ideal conditions for the performance of demanding chamber music. “As is well known,” said Mozart’s pupil Ignaz von Seyfried, “Beethoven was, so to speak, the cock of the walk in the Razumovsky household. Everything he composed was tried out there as soon as it was written and, according to his own account, executed with razor-sharp precision”.

Beethoven’s middle string quartets were performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker with alternating ensembles in the Beethoven Year 2020. They included the Harp quartet in E flat major op. 74, which owes its title to the striking pizzicato passages within the opening movement. The first performances were given by the Schuppanzigh Quartet – as was the case with the String Quartet in F minor, op. 95, which Beethoven composed during an existential crisis in his life. He called the piece Quartetto serioso because of its dramatic mood, which in parts reaches extremes.