| David Finckel and Eugene Drucker discuss the new style found in Op. 59, No. 1. (3:47) |  |
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| Eugene Drucker and David Finckel analyze Op. 59, No. 2. (2:18) | |
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| Eugene Drucker and David Finckel analyze Op. 59, No. 3. (2:01) | |
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Some five years after the publication of Op. 18, Beethoven returned to the writing of string quartets, the occasion being a commission for three such works from Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, an art collector and a good amateur violinist. Characterized by a contemporary as an “enemy of the revolution but a friend to the fair sex,” Razumovsky was also serious enough about music to ask Beethoven for theory and composition lessons. From 1808 until 1816, he maintained his own string quartet …
Since Op. 18, Beethoven had undertaken immense voyages of discovery that had made it possible for him to compose such works as the “Eroica” Symphony, the “Appassionata,” and Leonore (Fidelio). In 1806, the year he composed the “Razumovsky” Quartets, he also wrote the Piano Concerto No. 4, the Symphony No. 4, and the Violin Concerto. The new quartets are to their genre what the “Eroica” had been to the symphony.
The “Razumovsky” Quartets were followed a few years later by two single works in striking contrast to each other—Op. 74, written in 1809, and Op. 95, composed around 1810. The terse Op. 95 is difficult Beethoven in every sense; by comparison, Op. 74 is genial and inviting, though at no sacrifice of the personal and original. But while the Op. 74 Quartet may sound genial, the period of its creation was tumultuous. “Nothing but drums, canons, human misery of every sort!” was Beethoven’s description of life in Vienna that July of 1809. Since April, Austria had been at war with France for the fourth time in 18 years.
—Michael Steinberg
The Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung reviewed the “Razumovsky” Quartets in the February 27, 1807, issue:
Three new, very long (no coughing now!) and difficult Beethoven string quartets, dedicated to the Russian Ambassador, Count Razumovsky, are also attracting attention of all connoisseurs. The conception is profound and the construction excellent, but they are not easily comprehended—with the possible exception of the Third in C major, which cannot but appeal to intelligent lovers of music because of its originality, melody, and harmonic power.
Violinist Felix Radicati:
Have you got these here! Ha! Beethoven, as the world says, and as I believe, is music-mad;—for these are not music. He submitted them to me in manuscript, and, at his request, I fingered them for him. I said to him, that he surely did not consider these works to be music?—to which he replied, “Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age.”
From Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, revised and edited by Elliot Forbes (Princeton, 1967)
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