Release Date: 12 January 1999
Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 636943418123
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: BEETHOVEN
Description
Ludwig van Beethoven(1770-1827)String Quartet in Fmajor, Op. 59, No. 1String Quartet in Fminor, Op. 95, Quartetto seriosoIn 1792 Beethoven left his native city of Bonn to seek his fortune inthe imperial capital, Vienna. Five years earlier his patron, the Archbishop ofCologne, a scion of the imperial family, had sent him to Vienna where he hadhoped to have lessons with Mozart. His plans were frustrated by the illness andsubsequent death of his mother, which made it necessary for him to return to Bonnand before long to take charge of the welfare of his younger brothers.Beethoven's father, overshadowed by the eminence of his own father,Kapellmeister to a former Archbishop, had proved inadequate both as a musicianand in the family, of which his eldest son now took control.As a boy Beethoven had been trained to continue family tradition as amusician and had followed his father and grandfather as a member of thearchiepiscopal musical establishment. In 1792 he arrived in Vienna withintroductions to various members of the nobility and with the offer of lessonswith Haydn, from whom he later claimed to have learned nothing. There werefurther lessons from the Court Composer, Antonio Salieri, and, perhaps moreimportant, from Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, an expert in counterpoint. Heembarked at once on an initial career as a keyboard virtuoso, skilled both asan executant and in the necessary art of improvisation. He was to establishhimself, in the course of time, as a figure of remarkable genius andoriginality and as a social eccentric, no respecter of persons, hiseccentricity all the greater because of his increasing deafness. This lastdisability made public performance, whether as a keyboard-player or in thedirection of his own music, more and more difficult, and must have served toencourage the development of one particular facet, the use of counterpoint,stigmatized by hostile contemporary critics as "learned". He died inVienna in 1827.In his sixteen string quartets, the first set of six published in 180land the last completed in 1826 and published in the year of his death,Beethoven was as innovative as ever, developing and extending a form thatseemed already to have reached a height of perfection in the later work ofHaydn and Mozart. The earliest mention of a string quartet comes in a recordedrequest of Count Apponyi in 1795. This had no immediate result, but it hasseemed possible that Beethoven in these years might have been influenced byEmanuel Aloys Forster, a musician 22 years his senior, whose teaching ofcounterpoint he admired and recommended to others, while profiting, perhaps,from the example of Forster's own quartets. At the same time Beethoven musthave known the later quartets of Mozart and the work of Haydn.Beethoven's first group of string quartets, the six that make up Opus18, were written between 1795 and 1800 and published in Vienna the followingyear. It has been suggested that the novelty of these quartets persuaded Haydnto abandon the qu
Tracklisting
Dariia Lytvishko
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop
Alice Di Piazza; Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Bigband; Titus Engel
Anna Alas i Jove; Miquel Villalba
David Childs; Black Dyke Band; Nicholas Childs
Bratisla
Borup:Conner
Aquinas Trio
