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Elias StringQuartet

The Beethoven ProjectParts 1–3

Part 1Tue 7 May 2013, 8.00pmMusic Room, Royal Pavilion

Part 2Sat 11 May 2013, 8.00pmSt George’s Church

Part 3Mon 20 May 2013, 8.00pmSt George’s Church

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Part 1Quartet in G major op. 18 no. 2Quartet in E flat major op. 127INTERVALQuartet in F major op. 59 no. 1, ‘Razumovsky’

Tue 7 May 2013, 8.00pmMusic Room, Royal Pavilion

Part 2Quartet in D major op. 18 no. 3Quartet in F minor op. 95, ‘Quartetto serioso’INTERVALQuartet in B flat major op. 130

Sat 11 May 2013, 8.00pmSt George’s Church

Part 3Quartet in A major op. 18 no. 5Quartet in C major op. 59 no. 3, ‘Razumovsky’INTERVALQuartet in C sharp minor op. 131

Mon 20 May 2013, 8.00pmSt George’s Church

The Beethoven Project


Introduction

The writing of string quartets was a daunting challenge for any youngcomposer in Vienna in the 1790s, even one as brilliantly gifted asBeethoven. Over the previous two decades Haydn, especially, and Mozarthad raised the quartet to the most exalted of classical genres: a supremevehicle for ‘learned’ taste and subtle, civilized musical discourse. In the wordsof the late 18th-century aesthetician Daniel Schubart, a string quartetexpressed ‘the whole musical universe concentrated into one work’.

Not surprisingly, Beethoven waited until he had established his credentials asa composer for his own instrument, the piano, before venturing on his stringquartets in the autumn of 1798. In preparation, he had steeped himself in thequartets of his great predecessors, copying out many of them, including threeof Haydn’s epoch-making op. 20 set and Mozart’s A major Quartet K464.More than with any of his previous works, he made extensive, painstakingsketches, both in the large workbooks that he kept in his lodgings and in thepocketbooks he carried round on his walks in Vienna and the surroundingcountryside.

Although some players and listeners found them strong meat, Beethoven’s op. 18 quartets were generally well received when they appeared in 1801. The reviewer for the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote of the firstthree that they were ‘excellent works… giving a complete demonstration ofBeethoven’s art’, adding that ‘they must be played often and very well, asthey are very difficult to play and by no means popular in manner’. Havingnow proved himself in the most elevated genre of chamber music, Beethovenbecame absorbed in other large-scale projects, including the Third PianoConcerto, the Second Symphony and the three Piano Sonatas op. 31. Then,in the autumn of 1802, came the climacteric of the Heiligenstadt Testament, a document of despair and depression written by Beethoven in the village ofHeiligenstadt, in which he resolved to triumph over his encroaching deafnessthrough his art. Determined to pursue a ‘new path’ in music, he embarked onthe ‘Eroica’ Symphony, to be followed by the ‘Waldstein’ and ‘Appassionata’Sonatas and the opera Fidelio, the first version of which was completed in1805. That same year Beethoven began work on a set of three quartetscommissioned by one of his most musically cultivated patrons, Count AndreasRazumovsky.

Ludwig van Beethoven


The ‘Razumovsky’ quartets, op. 59, stand in the same relation to the op. 18quartets as the ‘Eroica’ does to the first two symphonies. In their sometimestruculent way, op. 18 had by and large adhered to the 18th-century notion,encapsulated by Goethe, of the string quartet as ‘a conversation between fourintelligent people’. With the op. 59 quartets, unprecedented in their rhetoricalforce and symphonic cast, the private has become public. Projection ratherthan intimate discourse is now the order of the day. As the Americanmusicologist Joseph Kerman put it, conversation is often replaced bysomething nearer to ‘determined ensemble shouting’.

These quintessential works of Beethoven’s so-called middle period werefollowed by two isolated quartets: the genial ‘Harp’, op. 74, in 1809, andthe violently compressed ‘Quartetto serioso’, op. 95, in 1810. Then came agap of nearly 14 years. The revised version of Fidelio, which had itspremiere in 1814, had marked the zenith of Beethoven’s popular acclaimand the culmination of his ‘middle period’. With a few exceptions — the‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony — hismusic now abandoned the monumental, heroic vision for a more private,introspective questing. It is tempting to imagine Beethoven composing his latequartets of 1824–6 in hermetic isolation from the world, but they were in factwritten for immediate performance and publication. Indeed, as Beethovenhimself noted with satisfaction, there was a newly flourishing market for stringquartets in the mid-1820s, stimulated not least by the popularity of his ownop. 18 and, increasingly, of his middle-period quartets.

For all their structural and harmonic innovations, these five late quartets —opp. 127, 130, 131 (in seven movements!), 132 and 135 — still dependon the sonata principle that Beethoven had used with such far-seeing masteryall his creative life. It is this, together with his magnificent sanity and control,even in extremis, that confirms Beethoven as an essentially Classical artist inan age of burgeoning subjective Romanticism. Yet in these sublime latequartets Beethoven imbues the Classical sonata ideal with a newconcentration, clarity and inspired eccentricity, while expanding it as neverbefore to embrace fugue (otherworldly in op. 131, violently rebarbative in theGrosse Fuge that concludes op. 130), variations, serene, rarefied lyricism,quasi-folksong and — in a movement like the Presto of op. 131 —knockabout farce.


Part 1

Quartet in G major op. 18 no. 2Allegro Adagio cantabile — Allegro — Tempo IScherzo. Allegro Allegro molto quasi presto

The second of Beethoven’s op. 18 quartets in their published order is analtogether more urbane affair than the first. Despite subversive moments, thefiery revolutionary here re-creates the spirit of the 18th-century comedy ofmanners; and of all the op. 18 quartets, this is the one that most oftensuggests Haydn. The courtly opening, with its graciously balanced two-barphrases, has spawned the German nickname ‘Komplimentier-Quartett’(‘quartet of bows and curtsies’). But amid the relaxed, civilized discourse thereare plenty of surprises. As in the first movement of op. 18 no. 1, therecapitulation enters, unexpectedly, in an emphatic forte, with the theme (onthe cello) resoundingly counterpointed by the repeated crotchets of thetransition theme. Then, in a series of canons between the two violins, theopening phrase slips through a series of distant modulations. After thesemagical new excursions, the coda is terse and epigrammatic, endingnonchalantly with the original version of the main theme.

The Adagio begins as a formal, rather old-fashioned violin-solo-plus-accompaniment, which becomes more florid as it proceeds. Then, out of theblue, Beethoven takes a tiny cadential figure, speeds it up to Allegro andmakes it the basis of a quivering moto perpetuo dance that has more than awhiff of Mendelssohn. When the Adagio returns it is even more extravagantlyornamented, with a suggestion of parody. The (not so fast) Scherzo is themost puckish and humorous in op. 18, with Beethoven drawing the maximumcomic capital from its airy opening theme. Launched by a compact,Haydnesque theme, the finale makes gleeful play with displaced accents,typically Beethovenian ‘rough’ counterpoint and outrageous shifts of key,above all the deception at the end of the development, where the musiclingers on the brink of G major before insouciantly continuing in A flat.

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Quartet in E flat major op. 127Maestoso — AllegroAdagio ma non troppo e molto cantabileScherzando vivace — PrestoFinale

After the lone op. 95 Quartet of 1810, 12 years passed before Beethoven’sthoughts turned again to the string quartet. In the summer of 1822 he offeredthe Leipzig publisher Peters a quartet, already partly sketched, together withthe Missa solemnis. Peters accepted the mass but turned down the quartet. A new stimulus came in November that year, with a lucrative commission fromthe Russian amateur cellist Prince Nikolas Galitzin for up to three quartets. Butwork on the Ninth Symphony prevented Beethoven returning to his sketchesuntil the summer of 1824. In December he wrote that he had virtuallycompleted the first of the Galitzin quartets, in E flat. But, true to form, hecontinued to make last-minute revisions, causing the premiere, by theSchuppanzigh Quartet, to be postponed to 6 March.

With limited time for preparation and rehearsal, the performance was not asuccess. The quartet’s numerous changes of metre, for instance, causedenormous problems of ensemble. With some understatement, Schuppanzighstated that ‘its originality makes it difficult, and one cannot grasp it at firstsight’. Beethoven, by now profoundly deaf, did not attend the concert, butwhen he heard reports from his friends he resolved that a repeat performancebe arranged as soon as possible with Joseph Böhm, who had often led theensemble in Schuppanzigh’s absence. At the suggestion of the secondviolinist, Karl Holz, the quartet was played not once but twice in eachconcert, to enable the audience of connoisseurs to digest its complexities.Holz’s novel idea paid off. The two ‘double’ concerts were a triumph. ‘Themisty veil disappeared, and the magnificent work of art shone in all its glory’,wrote one admiring Viennese critic.

In his classic study of the string quartets, the American musicologist JosephKerman called op. 127 ‘Beethoven’s crowning monument to lyricism’. Thoughit has its disquieting, subversive aspects, spaciousness and serenity rule. As inop. 130, the opening movement integrates its grandly sonorous Maestosointroduction into the main body of the movement, creating in effect a ‘firstsubject’ in two different tempos. The Maestoso dissolves via a trill into thetenderly beseeching Allegro theme and twice recurs later in the movement, atthe end of the exposition and during the development. Either side of theMaestoso’s fortissimo final appearance, fragments of the Allegro theme

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generate a surprising ferocity. But the storms are short lived. The recapitulationglides in almost before we realize it, and the coda lingers over the maintheme in ethereal polyphonic textures.

The Adagio, in A flat, is one of Beethoven’s most sublime meditations: sixcontinuously unfolding variations on a rapt, gently swaying 12/8 theme akinto the ‘Benedictus’ and ‘Dona nobis pacem’ in the Missa solemnis. After theplayfully florid dialogues of the second variation, marked scherzando, themusic slips into the unearthly remoteness of E major for the third variation(Adagio molto espressivo), the movement’s profound, contemplative heart. The home key returns in the next variation, where first violin and cello singecstatically against soaring arpeggios and trills. Then comes a strange, spare-textured variation, darkening from D flat major to minor, before thespiritualized dance of the final variation. The brief coda offers another, brief,glimpse of E major — a visionary moment that may have influenced a similarfleeting reminiscence in the Adagio of Schubert’s String Quintet.

The obvious exception to the quartet’s prevailing lyricism is the spikilyhumorous scherzo. Here the thematic material is bare, almost minimalistic; butthe music is endlessly engrossing, with its fluid, semi-contrapuntal textures (thehints of fugato are never quite realized), its cross-rhythms and silences, and itsenigmatic snatches of recitative, based on a transformation of the ubiquitoustheme. Beethoven ratchets up the tempo to Presto for the trio, a shadowy,scurrying affair that suddenly turns into a stomping rustic dance. After a repeatof the scherzo, he feints at a full reprise of the trio before ending with comicalbrusqueness.

The trio’s bucolic accents also colour the finale, especially the strutting secondtheme, with its rudely dissonant climax. But Beethoven works his country-dance tunes in wonderfully subtle, airy textures. As in the first movement, therecapitulation steals in ethereally. Then, towards the end, the motion subsidesand the music melts via another trill into the coda, in 6/8 time. Subvertingtradition, Beethoven uses the new metre not for a display of brilliance but tocreate a radiant lyrical apotheosis that dissolves and transfigures the maintheme.

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Quartet in F major op. 59 no. 1, ‘Razumovsky’AllegroAllegretto vivace e sempre scherzandoAdagio molto e mesto —Thème russe. Allegro

At about the turn of the 19th century, Vienna was swarming with musicallycultured Russian, Polish and Hungarian aristocrats. Those who could afford iteven supported their own string quartets. Among these was Count AndreasKyrilovich Razumovsky, Russian ambassador in Vienna and a good amateurviolinist who from 1808 to 1814, when his residence burnt down, maintaineda house quartet led by Beethoven’s longstanding friend Ignaz Schuppanzigh(Razumovsky himself usually played second violin). A few years earlierSchuppanzigh had founded a professional quartet to give concerts in a hallattached to the Viennese restaurant ‘Zum römischen Kaiser’ (‘The RomanEmperor’); and Razumovsky’s commission for three quartets ‘with Russianmelodies, real or imitated’ may have been prompted by these public concerts.Sketches date from the winter of 1804–5, though it was not until May 1806,immediately after finishing the Fourth Piano Concerto, that Beethoven got downto serious work on the ‘Razumovsky’ quartets, as they are always dubbed.

Not surprisingly, the new works, unprecedented in their scale, rhetorical forceand technical demands, baffled many when they were given their premieres bySchuppanzigh’s quartet in February 1807. The Viennese correspondent of theAllgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote that ‘three very long and difficultBeethoven quartets… are attracting the attention of all connoisseurs. They areprofoundly thought through and composed with enormous skill, but will not beintelligible to everyone… ‘ By early May the same correspondent was writingthat ‘these difficult but profound quartets please more and more’. But ‘difficult’they remained, both technically and interpretatively. When the Italian violinistFelix Radicati admitted he found them incomprehensible, Beethoven allegedlyretorted: ‘Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age’. The story may havegrown in the telling. But while the op. 18 works rapidly made their way, theRazumovsky quartets would win general appreciation only with the rise of theprofessional string quartet in the following decades.

When the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung critic wrote that the new quartetswere ‘very long’, he must have been thinking above all of the first of the set, inF major. In 1806 this was almost certainly the longest quartet ever to have beencomposed; and as in the ‘Eroica’ Symphony there is expansion on every level.This new structural amplitude supports an unprecedented weight and density of

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Count Andreas KyrilovichRazumovsky (1728–1803),the Russian ambassador inVienna who commissionedBeethoven's String Quartets op. 59


argument. For the first time in a four-movement work, all the movements are infully worked-out sonata form, creating a sonata orgy without parallel inBeethoven’s output. The very opening, with its echt-Beethovenian combination ofspaciousness and tension, establishes the work’s scale. The poise of the broad,tranquil melody, shared between cello and first violin, is undermined by floatingharmonies that never emphatically establish the tonic key. A firm F major chord,in root position, is sounded only with the fortissimo in bar 19. We alreadyknow that Beethoven is working on a huge canvas.

The development is even more expansive, with a mysterious pianissimo fugatoat its centre and, just before the recapitulation, a strange passage that pushesthe alien harmonies heard early in the movement to the verge of incoherence.Even by Beethoven’s standards the recapitulation radically reinterprets the eventsof the exposition, most dramatically near the beginning, where the cello’sharmonically unstable repeated Gs drop a semitone to G flat, initiating amajestic modulation to D flat major. As in the first movement of the ‘Eroica’, themusic’s scale demands a correspondingly momentous coda. In a magnificentmoment of resolution, the main theme is thundered out for the one and only timein solidly grounded F major harmony.

Beethoven follows this vast opening Allegro with an idiosyncratic scherzandomovement that grows from the cello’s laconic rhythmic monotone and embracesa delightful variety of moods and conversational textures. Though in full sonataform, the movement behaves in very un-sonata-like ways, with its blurring offormal boundaries (the recapitulation, for instance, enters casually, not with themonotone but with the suave dolce theme from the first group of themes beneaththe first violin’s trills) and its air of capricious instability.

Over the F minor Adagio molto e mesto (‘very slow and sad’), Beethoven wrotethe inscription ‘A willow or acacia over my brother’s grave’ — a possibleallusion to his brother Georg, who had died in infancy in 1783. WhateverBeethoven’s intended meaning, the movement is one of his noblest elegies, amore intimate counterpart to the funeral march of the ‘Eroica’. At the end thetragic mood is dissipated by a violin cadenza that ushers in the finale. FulfillingRazumovsky’s request, the cello now introduces a Russian folktune, ‘Ah my luck,such luck!’, which tells of an old, battle-weary soldier. In the process, though,Beethoven changes its character from Slavic, modal-flavoured melancholy to ajaunty dance that hovers ambiguously between F major and D minor. Just beforethe close, he makes last-minute amends for jollying up the tune by slowing itdown and adorning it with soulful, chromatic harmonies.

PART 1


Part 2

Quartet in D major op. 18 no. 3AllegroAndante con motoAllegroPresto

Sketched during 1798 and completed early the following year, this quartetwas Beethoven’s first work in the genre. Apart from the rumbustious finale it isthe most lyrical and softly spoken of the op. 18 set, especially in the leisurelyfirst movement, with its emphasis on the key of the ‘relaxing’ subdominant, G major. The magical opening — a sinuous, almost improvisatory violinmelody against sustained chords from the lower instruments — may have beeninspired by Haydn’s recent ‘Sunrise’ Quartet op. 76 no. 4. Yet despite theunhurried ease and smoothness of the writing, there are several quietlyaudacious Beethovenian strokes: for instance, the last-minute twist to C major,rather than the expected A major, for the rustic second theme; or, mostpoetically of all, the gentle emergence of the recapitulation from a burst of C sharp major harmony at the climax of the development — one of the mostinspired strokes in all the op. 18 quartets.

The Andante con moto, in B flat rather than the more closely related keys of A or G (the choice perhaps suggested by the flatwards tendencies of the firstmovement), is an amalgam of sonata and rondo, with a solemn, richlyharmonized main theme, shared between second and first violins, offset by anironically dainty, scherzando-like idea. Beethoven artfully combines the twoaspects in the tonally wide-ranging development. The coda, dreaming wistfullyon fragments of the opening theme, is especially touching.

Somewhere between a minuet and a scherzo, the third movement is one ofthose shyly spoken, faintly whimsical pieces characteristic of early Beethoven.(There is a famous example in the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata.) The D minor trio isequally understated, setting a scurrying theme for the two violins in turn againsta repeated four-note descending scale — shades here of a Baroquepassacaglia. The brilliant tarantella finale looks back to Mozart’s String Quintetin D (K593) and forward to Schubert, who recalled it, with an added demonicforce, in the finales of his last two string quartets. Beethoven’s movement hasan irrepressible coursing energy, with virtuoso feats of counterpoint in thecentral development and an adventurous coda that combines the ubiquitous

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main theme with a new, striding countermelody before reducing the theme toits first three notes in a pianissimo close — the kind of whispered joke endingBeethoven learnt from his erstwhile teacher Haydn.

Quartet in F minor op. 95, ‘Quartetto serioso’Allegro con brioAllegretto ma non troppo — Allegro assai vivace ma serioso — più allegroLarghetto espressivo — Allegretto agitato

1810 was a difficult year for Beethoven. In the spring his hopes of marryingTherese Malfatti had collapsed in the face of her family’s disapproval. And hismood during the summer and autumn was one of disenchantment, exacerbatedby the ‘demon’ of his worsening deafness. Creatively, too, 1810 wasrelatively barren, with only two major works completed, both centring on F minor: the incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont and this ‘Quartetto serioso’(Beethoven’s own title), finished in October and dedicated to his friend BaronNikolaus Zmeskall von Domanowecz, an amateur cellist and a frequent targetof the composer’s notorious ‘unbuttoned’ humour.

The quartet lives up to its title — with a vengeance. After its publication, in aletter to Sir George Smart of the London Philharmonic Society, Beethovenstressed that it was ‘intended for a small circle of connoisseurs and shouldnever be performed in public’. The ‘Razumovsky’ quartets of 1806 had initiallybaffled many Viennese music lovers. But even connoisseurs would surely havebeen taken aback by the F minor Quartet, Beethoven’s most radical and‘difficult’ work to date: cussed, elliptical, fiercely compressed, wilfullysubverting norms and thwarting expectations at every juncture.

The first movement, permeated by its furious unison opening theme, is the mostviolently concentrated Beethoven ever wrote: a high-pressure sonata drama thatpacks an astonishing amount of activity into a four-minute span. Beethoven hasno truck with conventional transition passages or cadences, and does not somuch modulate to new keys as assault them, exploiting the shock contrast ofthe so-called ‘Neapolitan’ relationship — the move to a key a semitone abovethe tonic. As early as the fifth bar the cello plunges, after an abrupt silence —another of the movement’s hallmarks — into G flat. In the second group ofthemes, beginning in D flat, a vision of lyrical calm is twice shattered byfortissimo scales in A major and D major. After the quiet D flat major close of

PART 2


the exposition (there is no repeat in this most explosive of movements), anotherbrutal tonal wrench, to F major, launches the terse and dramatic development.

As in the Seventh and Eighth symphonies of 1811–12, Beethoven writes anAllegretto instead of a true slow movement. Here the key is D major, strangelyremote in the context of F minor though prefigured by the first movement’ssavage D major outbursts. Again, the music constantly thwarts expectations. At its centre is a spectral chromatic fugato, which Beethoven later elides withthe main theme. The coda fades away mysteriously, with a final destabilizingchord that pivots to the scherzo. Again, Beethoven avoids expected cadencesas he works his jagged, laconic theme with an aggressive insistence to rivalthe opening movement. Lyrical relief comes courtesy of the trio, heard first in G flat major (the ‘Neapolitan’ relationship again) then, drastically abbreviated,in D major. Here Beethoven inverts the conventional violin roles, setting asoaring, sustained melody high on the second violin’s A and E strings againstdancing figuration for the first.

The finale shares the turbulence and cussedness of the first movement andscherzo, though with an added pathos, both in the brief, yearning slowintroduction and in the valse triste main theme. At the end of the recapitulationthe music becomes fragmented, enigmatic. Then, in a shimmering F majorcoda, the quartet evaporates in a puff of spray: a comic opera send-off thatrepresents not so much a typically Beethovenian resolution as an airy denial ofthe pain and violence that have gone before.

Quartet in B flat major op. 130Adagio, ma non troppo — AllegroPrestoAndante con moto ma non troppoAlla danza tedesca: Allegro assaiCavatina: Adagio molto espressivoFinale. Allegro

The impetus for op. 130, like its companions op. 127 and op. 132, was acommission ‘for one, two or three quartets’ from the Russian amateur cellistand composer Prince Nikolas Galitzin in November 1822. Beethoven startedwork on the B flat Quartet in May or June 1825, immediately aftercompleting op. 132, quickly drafted the first two movements and adumbratedan aria-like movement in D flat. This seems to have led Beethoven to an

PART 2


impasse, and for the moment he abandoned it in favour of a lighter piece,also in D flat, that became the quartet’s third movement. He then decided tocreate a six-movement structure, along the lines of an 18th-centurydivertimento, by incorporating two extra pieces: an Alla danza tedesca(German dance) originally intended for op. 132, and a reworking of thesketches for the D flat aria, now in E flat and entitled ‘Cavatina’. On 24August 1825 Beethoven wrote to his friend Karl Holz, second violinist in theSchuppanzigh Quartet, that the quartet would be finished in ten or 12 days.But that was to reckon without the vast Grosse Fuge that Beethoven wasplotting for the finale; and instead of 12 days he needed until the end ofNovember to complete the work.

Not surprisingly, the Grosse Fuge baffled — even repelled — many in theaudience when the quartet was given its premiere in March 1826. Inresponse to requests from his friends and publisher, Beethoven agreed toprovide a new, more accessible finale and to publish the fugue as a separateopus. The substitute finale was ready by November. It would be the last pieceBeethoven completed.

More, perhaps, than any of Beethoven’s other instrumental works, the B flatQuartet is built on extreme contrasts, both within and between movements. Yet the work is unified by the ideas of the Adagio introduction, which infiltrateeach of the movements. Its chromatically descending opening, for instance, isretraced at the outset of the third movement and clearly influences the themeof the fugue; the rising 6th of the second bar recurs pointedly in the lyricalsecond theme of the opening movement and at the start of the Cavatina; andthe two-note cadential figure heard in the second and fourth bars not onlypervades the Alla danza tedesca but is transformed, with a change ofrhythmic emphasis, into the persistent ostinato motif that runs through the first-movement development.

Even more than in op. 127, Beethoven closely integrates the slowintroduction, with its deep, rich textures, into the main body of the movement.No sooner has the Allegro theme — a torrent of semiquavers in the innerparts counterpointed with fanfares in first violin and cello — got underwaythan it breaks off for a few bars of the introductory Adagio. Twice more,before the development and at the start of the coda, fragments of the Adagiointroduction alternate with snatches of the Allegro theme, creating an air ofstrange uncertainty. Amid the tense contrasts of tempo, texture and rhythmicpattern, the central development, paradoxically, provides the calmest stretchof music in the whole movement, with the cello singing a variant of the brief,

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soulful ‘second subject’ against the first violin’s fanfares and a soft ostinato insecond violin and viola.

After this revolutionary sonata structure, the next three movements suggest asublimated divertimento. The furtive Presto in B flat minor — as terse andepigrammatic as some of Beethoven’s late bagatelles — encloses a boisterousmajor-key Trio in Beethoven’s most unbuttoned vein. In the D flat Andante, withits fantastically delicate scherzando textures, Beethoven casts an affectionate,faintly ironic glance at the urbane manners of the 18th century. Set in thedrastically contrasting key of G major — the tonal antipode of the preceding D flat — the Alla danza tedesca fourth movement again evokes an earlier agein its themes, though emphatically not in their treatment: listen, for instance, tothe rude dynamic contrasts, the ‘hairpin’ dynamics which give the guilelessdance/nursery tune a distinctly queasy feel, and the weird, whimsical coda, inwhich Beethoven fragments the theme between the instruments and presents thefirst four bars in reverse order.

According to Karl Holz, the following Cavatina, in E flat, ‘cost the composertears in the writing and provoked the confession that nothing he had writtenhad so moved him’. Belying its title, this searching, confiding music —perhaps the supreme expression of Beethoven the lyricist — is no simpleaccompanied aria: the accompaniment in the outer sections is subtlypolyphonic in texture (note the second violin’s overlapping countermelodiesand imitations), while the central section, marked beklemmt (‘oppressed’,‘stifled’), in C flat, looks into the void, with its strange, barely coherentsobbing figures over palpitating triplets.

On the face of it Beethoven’s new finale to op. 130 seems like a throwbackto an earlier manner, with its elegance and its nonchalant, slightly abstractedair. There is Haydnesque wit, too, as when the main theme starts out in the‘wrong’ key of C minor before correcting itself. But the movement, a mix ofsonata and rondo, is unmistakably ‘late Beethoven’ in its insouciantcontrapuntal mastery and its juxtaposition of laconic dryness with exquisitelyricism. While Beethoven had no reason in the autumn of 1826 to think thatthis would be his last completed movement, he bowed out with grace,humour and a certain whimsical detachment.

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Top, Ignaz Schuppanzigh (1777–1830), the Viennese violinist and conductor who led the Schuppanzigh Quartet: lithograph by Bernhardvon Schrötter; bottom, a contemporary comic which, when folded and unfolded, made Schuppanzigh appear to lose and gain weight

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Part 3

Quartet in A major op. 18 no. 5AllegroMenuettoAndante cantabileAllegro

While Beethoven’s op. 18 quartets were generally well received, someconservative-minded critics found them harsh and ‘difficult’ — an astonishingreaction to us two centuries later. You would have to look far for a moreurbanely Mozartian work of Beethoven’s than the fifth of the set, in A major.Indeed, its third movement — a theme with variations — and finale aredirectly modelled on Mozart’s quartet in the same key, K464. This, the mostcomplex and densely contrapuntal of Mozart’s quartets, was a particularfavourite of Beethoven’s. According to his pupil Carl Czerny, he onceexclaimed of it: ‘That’s what I call a work! In it, Mozart was telling the world:“Look what I could do for you if you were ready for it…!”’

While the opening Allegro, in a dancing 6/8 metre, is Mozartian in spirit, ithas none of the chromatic richness and ambiguity of the equivalent movementin Mozart’s quartet. The atmosphere here is of puckish, faintly bucolicelegance, though, true to form, Beethoven enjoys ruffling the music’s surfacewith his favourite offbeat accents. Compared with the earlier op. 18 quartets,the imitative counterpoint is almost nonchalant, where theirs had beenstrenuous. A shift from E major to F sharp minor at the start of the developmentpromises tense drama that Beethoven quickly defuses, relaxing into the key ofD major over pastoral drones in the cello. Following Mozart’s example, therecapitulation reproduces the outlines of the exposition with unusual fidelity,capped by a mere six bars of coda that wittily recall the movement’s opening.

As in K464, Beethoven’s second movement is a minuet, though with none ofMozart’s contrapuntal and harmonic intricacy. For that we must wait a quarterof a century until the A minor Quartet op. 132, which recalls the spirit and,occasionally, even the letter of Mozart’s minuet. Yet the minuet in op. 18 no. 5,with its delicate two-part textures, has a chaste, almost finicky elegance that isuniquely its own. There is a delightful foretaste of Schubert in the beeryLändler trio, roughed up by offbeat sforzandi.

In the Andante, Beethoven’s variation theme — essentially a series of fallingand rising scales — is far simpler than Mozart’s. But after five variations (of

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which the fourth is an exquisite, soft reharmonization of the theme),Beethoven, like Mozart, embarks on an elaborate coda, beginning with amysterious swerve from D to B flat: here the cello recalls the ‘drum’ ostinatonear the end of Mozart’s movement. K464 is also the audible inspirationbehind the finale, which contrasts and then combines the quicksilver openingtheme (a delightful foretaste here of Mendelssohn’s ‘fairy’ scherzos) with asustained chorale melody. Even Mozart rarely wore his polyphonic learningmore lightly than Beethoven does in this scintillating movement.

Quartet in C major Op 59 No 3, ‘Razumovsky’Andante con moto — Allegro vivaceAndante con moto quasi AllegrettoMenuetto. Grazioso — Allegro molto

Of the three ‘Razumovsky’ quartets, the third, in C major, seems to haveposed fewest problems for the select audience at the Viennese premiere inFebruary 1807. After warning that they would not be comprehensible toeveryone, the critic of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung added, ‘with theexception of the third, which by virtue of its individuality, melodic inventionand harmonic power is certain to win over every educated music lover’.

This quartet’s relative brevity was surely one factor in its appeal. We mightguess, too, that connoisseurs relished the extrovert brilliance of the twoAllegros, the exoticism of the second movement and the urbanity of theminuet. Yet in some ways this is the strangest work of the three. Thelabyrinthine slow introduction, surely modelled on Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’Quartet K465, goes even further than Mozart in blurring not only the tonalitybut also any firm sense of rhythm. Even at the start of the Allegro vivace thekey of C major is initially shadowed and tentative before emergingunequivocally, with a glorious sense of release, at the first sustained forte.From here on the music is predominantly exuberant, relishing the depth andsonorous brilliance of C major. Yet the movement also has its whimsical,quizzical streak. Beethoven, typically, works wonders with the main theme’sopening two-note figure, above all at the climax of the development where itexpands into a mysterious canon between upper and lower strings.

This is the only one of the ‘Razumovsky’ quartets not to include an authenticRussian melody. Paradoxically, though, the Andante con moto quasi Allegretto

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sounds more Slavonic than anything in Op 59 Nos 1 and 2. With itsrhythmic obsessiveness and atmosphere of remote melancholy, this is the mostinscrutable movement in Op 59, from the wailing opening theme, over thecello’s repeated pizzicato E, to the mesmerized closing bars. Amid thisstrangeness, the galant ‘second subject’ in C major seems like an interloperfrom an ancien régime drawing room.

Beethoven brings us back to the light of common day with an almostexaggeratedly decorous minuet, a half-nostalgic, half-ironic glance back to anearlier age (shades here of the galant theme in the previous movement). In thepianissimo coda C major slips to a shadowy C minor. Then, after a last-second shift back to C major, the viola launches into a long, moto perpetuofugal subject (in fact a free inversion of the minuet theme), initiating the mostvirtuoso of all Beethoven’s quartet finales. The promise of a full-blown fugue,though, is short-lived. Instead, like Mozart’s G major Quartet K387 — andwith a nod to Beethoven’s own Op 18 No 5 — the movement alternatesstretches of ‘learned’ fugato with looser textures. Above a sketch Beethovenwrote ‘Let your deafness no longer be a secret — not even in art’. And it issurely not too fanciful to hear this whole torrential movement as a triumphantassertion of the will in the face of his affliction.

Prince Nikolas Galitzin (1794–1860), the Russian amateur cellist who commissioned Beethoven's String Quartets opp. 127, 130 and 132

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Quartet in C sharp minor op. 131Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo —Allegro molto vivace —Allegro moderato —Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile —Presto —Adagio quasi un poco andante —Allegro

Although Beethoven had financial insecurity written into his DNA, hecommanded high fees for his late string quartets. Prince Galitzin had paidhandsomely for his three commissioned works: opp. 127, 132 and 130.And while he was still wrestling with the Grosse Fuge finale of op. 130,Beethoven received a lucrative offer from the Paris-based publisher MoritzSchlesinger for op. 132 and 130, plus a third, as yet unwritten, quartet. This turned out to be the C sharp minor, begun in late 1825 and finished thefollowing summer. According to Karl Holz, Schuppanzigh’s second violinistafter his quartet was re-formed in 1824, Beethoven himself regarded the C sharp minor Quartet as his greatest. But though there are accounts ofearlier private performances, including, poignantly, one to Schubert on hisdeathbed, it was not heard in public until 1835.

Ever unpredictable in his dealings with publishers, Beethoven eventually soldthe rights not to Schlesinger (who later received the F major Quartet op. 135in compensation) but to Schott of Mainz, who paid more for a single workthan Prince Galitzin had done for three quartets. When Beethoven sent the C sharp minor Quartet to Schott he noted that it was ‘patched together fromvarious bits filched from here and there’. The publisher failed to see the joke,and had to be reassured that the quartet was in fact brand new. Perhaps the‘various bits filched from here and there’ were an ironic reference to thework’s novel plan — seven sections played virtually without pause — and itswilful diversity. Anticipating Mahler’s dictum that a symphony must contain ‘thewhole world’, Beethoven seems to have designed op. 131 to embrace a vastrange of forms, textures and feeling, from the unearthly elegy of the openingfugue to the street tunes and knockabout humour of the Presto, from thegliding, quizzical second movement to the truculence and lyrical pathos of thefinale.

Yet Beethoven being Beethoven, he welds diversity into a profound unity. Hefashions tight motivic links between sections, drawing much of the materialfrom the prominent pairs of semitones in the fugue theme (B sharp–C sharp,

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A–G sharp), and alluding to the fugue theme in the finale. Beyond this, thesections do not so much end as dissolve into each other, creating theimpression of a vast single span that traverses various related keys beforefinally reasserting C sharp minor.

The opening fugue testifies to Beethoven’s studies not only of Bach’s ‘48’ butalso the rarefied vocal polyphony of Palestrina. The music, however, rangesthrough a wider spectrum of tonalities than we ever find in a Bach fugue,straying as far as E flat minor and B major before settling in A major for anethereal canonic episode for the two violins. Beethoven then builds in a seriesof waves to a great climax, with the cello tolling the main theme in longernote values against rising sequences in the first violin and syncopations in theinner voices.

As the music seems to ebb away on bare octaves, C sharp rises softly to Dand the second movement — a secretive, quizzical scherzo — steals in. Thisis in effect a continuous variation on a gently rocking melody that makesprominent play with the pairs of semitones from the fugue. As so often in theselate quartets, Beethoven here uses simple, even childlike, material in odd andsubversive ways. After a sudden boisterous outburst — the first fortissimo inthe work — the movement fades inconclusively. Then two brisk cadentialchords initiate a few bars of quasi-operatic recitative, complete with cadenza-like flourishes: a brief interlude between the scherzo and the central variationmovement.

The key of the variations, A major, had been prominently ‘flagged’ in theopening fugue. While the theme, again, is of studied simplicity (Wagner,who revered op. 131, described it as ‘the incarnation of innocence’) thescoring is anything but naive. The melody is shared between the two violins,a subtle division made more clearly audible on the repeat when the secondviolin drops down an octave. Each of the six variations tends to grow moreintense and/or animated as it proceeds. Beethoven also indulges hisfondness for extreme and bizarre contrasts. The third variation, for instance,marked Andante moderato e lusinghiero (‘coaxingly’, ‘seductively’), begins asa dulcet canonic dialogue for viola and cello and ends in a grotesque,dissonant orgy of trills. The sublime meditation of the fourth variation — aslow, spiritualized waltz — culminates in a chain of trills. Then, with a suddenshift from A to C major, Beethoven launches a coda that becomes riotouslyinfested with trills before dissolving into the ether.

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A blunt cello arpeggio kick-starts the fifth movement, a duple-time scherzo thattrades on crazy disruptions of rhythm, dynamics and tempo. The Trio section— a smoother, less frenetic variant of the opening tune — comes round twiceand feints at yet another reprise; but Beethoven deflects this into a madcap,slightly eerie coda in which the instruments play the main theme sul ponticello(with the bows close to the bridge).

The sixth section is a brief but intensely poignant Adagio quasi un pocoandante that functions as an introduction to the finale. Here sonata form —used for the only time in the work — is the vehicle for the most dynamic andconfrontational music in the quartet. C sharp minor makes its firstreappearance since the fugue; and the sense that the finale completes amighty circle is reinforced by its tight thematic and tonal links with earliermovements, most obviously in the main theme’s piano answering phrases,which reorder the fugue’s first four notes. The luminous ‘second subject’ —one of Beethoven’s most sublime inventions — reaches its apotheosis in therecapitulation, first in a remote D major (echoing the key of the secondmovement), then in C sharp major. The coda darkens immediately into C sharp minor before pulling strongly towards F sharp minor. Only in the verylast bars does Beethoven insist on C sharp major. But after that long stretch ofF sharp minor the effect is faintly unsettling, echoing at a vast distance theambiguously poised ending of the opening fugue.

© Richard WigmoreRichard Wigmore is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster who specializes in the VienneseClassical period and in Lieder; his publications include The Pocket Guide to Haydn (Faber)

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Biography

Elias String QuartetSara Bitlloch violinDonald Grant violinMartin Saving violaMarie Bitlloch cello

Named after Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elias [Elijah], the Elias String Quartet was formed in 1998at the Royal Northern College of Music, where its members studied with Christopher Rowland;they also studied with the Alban Berg Quartet at the Hochschule in Cologne, and include amongtheir mentors Hugh Maguire, György Kurtág, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Henri Dutilleux and RainerSchmidt.

Formerly a member of the BBC’s New Generation Artists scheme and the recipient of a 2010Borletti–Buitoni Trust Award, the Quartet won the second prize and the Sidney Griller Prize at the2003 London International String Quartet Competition (as the Johnston String Quartet) and was afinalist in the 2005 Paolo Borciani Competition in Reggio Emilia.

The Elias String Quartet’s recent engagements include its debuts at Carnegie Hall in New York,the Washington Library of Congress, the Vienna Musikverein and the Berlin Konzerthaus. It hascollaborated with numerous leading artists, including Ralph Kirshbaum, Ann Murray, JoanRodgers, Mark Padmore, Roger Vignoles, Adrian Brendel, Anthony Marwood, and the Endellion,Jerusalem and Vertavo Quartets. It has presented a five-concert series at the Wigmore Hall,including collaborations with Leon Fleisher, Pascal Moraguès and Jonathan Biss, with whom ittoured the USA earlier this season. This season’s engagements also include concerts throughoutEurope; a tour of Australia with Musica Viva; and the continuation of the Beethoven Project, whichsees the Quartet performing all Beethoven’s string quartets in a series of cycles that began inJanuary 2011. The project is documented on a dedicated website supported by theBorletti–Buitoni Trust: www.thebeethovenproject.com.

Elias String Quartet


Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival

Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival is a registered charity that runs the year-round programme at BrightonDome (Concert Hall, Corn Exchange and Studio Theatre) as well as the three-week Brighton Festival thattakes place in venues across the city.

ChairMs Polly Toynbee

Board of Trustees Ms Pam Alexander, Cllr Geoffrey Bowden, Mr Donald Clark, Prof. Julian Crampton, Mr Simon Fanshawe, Mr Nelson Fernandez, Prof. David Gann, Mr David Jordan, Mr Alan McCarthy, Cllr Mo Marsh, Mr Dermot Scully, Ms Sue Stapely

Producing Brighton Festival each year is an enormous task involving hundreds of people. The directors would like tothank all the staff of Brighton Dome and Festival, the staff team at our catering partners Peyton & Byrne, the staff atall the venues, the volunteers and everyone else involved in making this great Festival happen.

Chief Executive Andrew CombenPA to Chief Executive Heather Jones

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Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival Staff


ProgrammesEditor Alison Latham | Biographies editor Oliver Tims | Design Heather Kenmure 020 7931 7639 | All articles are copyright of the author

Director of Operations Maxine Hort

ProductionHead of Production Rich GarfieldEvent Production Manager Olly OlsenOperations Production Manager Kevin TaylorProduction Coordinator Erica DellnerConcert Hall Senior Technician Nick Pitcher, Sam WellardCorn Exchange Senior Technician Andy FurneauxStudio Theatre Senior Technician Beth O’LearyTechnicians Jamie Barker, Sam Burgess, Bartosz Dylewski, Scott McQuaide, Jem Noble, Adam Vincent, Seth Wagstaff, Csaba Mach,Mike Bignell, Al Robinson, John Saxby, Jon Anrep, Chris Tibbles, Dan Goddard, Nick Goodwin, Nick Hill, Philip Oliver, Peter Steinbacher, Christos Takas, Youssef El-Kirate, Daniel Harvey, Marc Beatty, Rebecca Perkins, Owen Ridley, Graham Rees, Eliot Hughes, Matt Jones, James Christie, Robert Bullock

Conference and Event SalesBusiness Development Manager Donna MillerConference and Event Sales Manager Delphine CassaraMarketing Assistant Helen Rouncivell

MaintenanceMaintenance Manager John RogersMaintenance Supervisor Chris ParsonsMaintenance Plumber Colin BurtMaintenance Apprentice Matthew Ashby

Visitor ServicesHead of Visitor Services Zoe CurtisVisitor Services Manager Sarah WilkinsonEvent Managers Morgan Robinson, Tim Ebbs, Simon Cowan, Josh WilliamsDuty Event Managers Jamie Smith, Adam SelfVisitor Services Officer Emily CrossSenior Visitor Services Assistant Kara Boustead-HinksVisitor Services Assistants Peter Bann, Graham Cameron, Melissa Cox, Anja Gibbs, Valerie Furnham, David Earl, Andrea Hoban-Todd, Tony Lee, Jules Pearce, Joe Pryor, Alex Pummell, Josh Rowley, Thomas Sloan, Adam Self, Claire Swift, Carly West, Nicky Conlan, Matt Freeland, Matthew Mulcahy, Richard Thorp, Emily CrossVisitor Services Volunteer Coordinator Lizzy Leach

Front of HouseFront of House Manager Ralph CorkeFront of House Supervisors Bernard Brown, Kara Boustead-Hinks, Bill Clements, Gabi Hergert, John Morfett, Jeff Pearce, Betty Raggett,Michael Raynor, Adam Self

Stewards and SecurityPaul Andrews, David Azzaro, Peter Bann, Janey Beswick, Hannah Bishop, Jim Bishop, Penny Bishop, Andy Black, Sarah Bond, Sara Bowring, Alice Bridges, Frank Brown, Andy Buchanan, Johanna Burley, Carole Chisem, Julian Clapp, John Clarke, Tricia Clements,Joyce Colivet, NIcky Conlan, Mary Cooter, Fraser Crosbie, Darren Cross, John Davidson, Marie-Clare De Boer, Lawry Defreitas, Paddy Delaney, Emma Dell, Kathy Dent, Judi Dettmar, Alan Diplock, Melanie Dumelo, Maureen East, Jan Eccleston, Abigail Edwards,Daniel FlowerDay, Maria Foy, Valerie Furnham, Betty Gascoigne, Anja Gibbs, Vivien Glaskin, Matt Goorney, Debbie Greenfield,Louise Gregory, Ellie Griffiths- Moore, Paul Gunn, Gillian Hall, Kezia Hanson, Thomas Haywood, Martin Henwood, Al Hodgson, Mike Hollway, Peter Holmes, Frances Holt, Tony Jackson, Emily James-Farley, Mick Jessop, Julie Jones, Mark Jones, Julia Jupp, Jim Killick, Kev Koya, Jon Lee, Emma Levick, Ady Limmer, Samatha Lucus, Vicki Lywood-Last, Carol Maddock, Ivica Manic, Tania Marsh,Carole Moorhouse, Nick Morgan, Lisa Murray, Richard Nast, Mlinh Nguyen, Paley O’Connor, Brendan O’Meara, Lucy Paget, Simon Pattenden, Jules Pearce, Noele Picot, Rachel Potter, Will Rathbone, Grant Richie, Jenny Ridland, Ruth Rogers, Joshua Rowley, Eve Saunders, Rossana Schaffa, Laura Scobie, Samantha Sharman, Joe Simmons-Issler, Caroline Smith, Graham Smith, Jamie Smith, Alex Sparham, Sheila Stockbridge, Richard Thorp, Brigitt Turner, Carly West, Geraldine White, Cicely Whitehead, Geoff Wicks, Linda Williams.

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