Beethoven: String Quartet, Op. 59, No. 1

Perhaps you’re taking our mini-course “7 Days to Beethoven.” If not, you should be, for at least two reasons. First, it’s free. Second, it includes seven video performances of Beethoven’s music that provide a good overview of his music. If you read this series on listening, all the more reason to jump into that course.

Of course, there were many things we would like to have included in that course but couldn’t. You can’t do it all in 7 days, but we can always add some of those performances in this listening series.

Beethoven’s three “Razumovsky” quartets (Op. 59) were commissioned by the Russian ambassador to Vienna, Count Andrey Razumovsky. Completed in 1806, they fall in Beethoven’s “middle period,” which began (most say) with his Symphony No. 3 (Eroica). I like this colorful description:

The massive triptych of quartets comprising Op. 59 is the precise chamber music analog of the revolutionary Symphony No. 3 within the category of orchestral music. Written only a few years earlier, Beethoven’s Eroica symphony crash-landed into the Viennese symphonic tradition like a meteor from outer space, an awesome and imponderable monolith of grandeur and shock. This was Beethoven fully emerging, the most unrelenting musical pioneer of all time.

String quartets can sometimes be challenging, especially for novice listeners. That would be particularly true concerning Beethoven’s late quartets. But Op. 59, No. 1 strikes me as one of the more immediately appealing. And this video features performers with youth and energy.