Beginning a Beethoven Journey with Guarneri

When I began my “chronological journey” of the Sony Masterworks box set, Guarneri Quartet: The Complete Recordings 1965–2005, my first two articles dealt with First Viennese School composers in chronological order: Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. However, where Ludwig van Beethoven is concerned, most listeners are aware that there are significant stylistic differences across the “early,” “middle,” and “late” quartets. As a result, I would like to deal with these as separate categories, giving each its own article.

Original album cover for the Beethoven “middle” quartets (from the Amazon.com Web page for that album)

In the Sony release, the “first to appear” is the three-CD album entitled The Five Middle Quartets; and that is where I would like to begin. Many readers probably know that the first three of the quartets were collected as Beethoven’s Opus 59. They are known as the “Razumovsky” quartets, because they were commissioned by Count Andreas Razumovsky, who, at that time, was the Russian ambassador to Vienna. The Wikipedia page for this set provides a useful account of how Beethoven endowed each of the quartets with a reference to Russian music. The other two quartets are Opus 74 in E-flat major, known as the “Harp” quartet for its pizzicato passages, and Opus 95, called “Serioso” for its F minor key.

It is highly likely that, over the course of my regular trips to Grand Central Station, I encountered Guarneri performances of all five of these quartets in recital. (Since I was not documenting these experiences at that time, I cannot be certain.) However, the recordings were made between 1966 and 1968, when my primary focus was on undergraduate and graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thus, any of the performances I attended took place long after these works were recorded.

These days, I do my best to keep up with opportunities to listen to these quartets. Some readers may recall that my most recent encounter was almost exactly a month ago, when the Calidore Quartet played Opus 74 in Herbst Theatre during their third visit to San Francisco Performances. They may also recall that, when I wrote about the Guarneri recordings of quartets by Joseph Haydn, I closed by invoking Leonard Slatkin’s precept: “You can never conduct enough Haydn or Schubert.” That may be so; but, where Beethoven is concerned, I cannot get enough of opportunities to listen to his string quartets. The “late” quartets (to be discussed on this site in the, hopefully, near future) may be the most mind-bending; but I do my best to attend any performance of a “middle” quartet taking place here in San Francisco. In the absence of such opportunities, I am glad that I now have these Guarneri accounts as an alternative!