Daily Beethoven

String Quartet No. 4 in C Minor, Opus 18, no. 4

Friday, March 19, 2021

The fourth of Beethoven's Opus 18 quartets is actually the last of the sixth to be composed, and is in C-minor, the key associated with some of his most urgent and dramatic works.

String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Opus 18, no. 3

Thursday, March 18, 2021

The third of Beethoven's Opus 18 string quartets was actually the first composed - Beethoven himself placed it third in the cycle. It's a warm-hearted, genial work, with a rollicking, knee-slapping finale.

String Quartet No. 2, Opus 18, no. 2

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

The second of Beethoven's Opus 18 quartets in G Major has earned the nickname "Compliments Quartet" or "Quartet of Bows and Curtseys".

String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, Opus 18 no. 1

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

By 1798, Beethoven was ready to take up the string quartet, a genre already developed to a high art by Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven had copied out and intensively studied his predecessors' works, and after about two years and countless sketches produced a set of six string quartets published as Opus 18.

Kakadu Trio Variations, Opus 121a

Your Daily Beethoven

"Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu" (I am Kakadu the tailor) was the name of a popular tune from Wenzel Muller's opera "Die Schwestern von Prag (The Sisters from Prague).

An die ferne Geliebte, Opus 98

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Alois Jeitteles was a young physician who was also making a name for himself as a poet when he wrote the six poems which Beethoven wove into the beautiful "An die ferne Geliebte" (To the distant Beloved). It is a true Liederkreis (song cycle), which became the model for those of Schubert, Schumann and others. It is thoroughly composed so that the songs are inseparable from one another and ends with the beginning theme, making a circle.

Piano Concerto No. 5 in Eb Major, Opus 73

Your Daily Beethoven

Beethoven's fifth and last piano concerto, in E♭ major, Op. 73, was published in 1810 in French-occupied Vienna, but not performed until the following year in Leipzig. The Vienna premier took place in 1812, with Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny as the soloist, Beethoven being by this time too deaf to play with an orchestra.

Piano Concerto No. 4 in in G major, Op. 58

Friday, March 12, 2021

Beethoven's fourth piano concerto is unique in that it opens not with a grandiose orchestral introduction, but with a serene statement of the ideas by the piano soloist.

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Opus 37

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Beethoven premiered his third piano concerto, Opus 37 in C Minor, in 1803 at a massive benefit concert, which also featured the premieres of his Second Symphony, the oratorio “Christ on the Mount of Olives”, and a reprise of the first symphony (premiered a year earlier).

Piano Concerto No. 2 in Bb Major, Opus 19

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

What was published as Beethoven’s second piano concerto in Bb Major, Opus 19, was actually composed between 1787 and 1789 while Beethoven still lived in Bonn. He took it with him to Vienna, probably premiered it at the Burgtheater in 1795, and wrote a different finale for a 1798 performance in Prague. It was an important display piece for the young composer’s virtuosity at the keyboard.

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