Daily Beethoven

String Quartet No. 7 in F Major, Op. 59-1

Monday, March 22, 2021

Six years after the publication of the six Opus 18 string quartets, Beethoven received a commission for three quartets from Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, who was the funder of the Schuppanzigh Quartet and himself an accomplished violinist.

String Quartet No. 6 in Bb Major, Opus 18 no. 6

Sunday, March 21, 2021

Any idea that Beethoven's "early quartets", the Opus 18 set of six, are "lightweight" or simply imitative of Haydn and Mozart, will be dispelled by the last - the Quartet in B-flat, "La Melanconia" (Melancholy).

String Quartet No. 5 in A Major, Op. 18 no. 5

Saturday, March 20, 2021

The string quartet in A major Opus 18 no. 5, was modeled on Mozart's quartet K.464 in the same key signature and outline.

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.

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