Post by erik on Mar 11, 2023 22:40:21 GMT -5
A chamber work of Beethoven's is in this week's Classical Works Spotlight, this time in a version for string orchestra, led by the closest thing to a "celebrity" in classical music.
Beethoven: STRING QUARTET NO. 14 IN C SHARP MINOR, OP. 131 (FOR STRING ORCHESTRA)
While many of the string quartets written by Beethoven in his early years, like the symphonies of that same period, were more or less advancing what Mozart and Haydn did, the latter quartets were exceptionally complex. A lot of this was due to the fact that the composer likely didn’t know how challenging his music was because, for the second half of his life, he increasingly became unable to hear sounds only in his mind. One such example, alongside the later string quartets of his younger contemporary Franz Schubert, is the 14th String Quartet, in the fairly dissonant key of C Sharp Minor. Structured in seven uninterrupted movements and averaging forty minutes in length, the work was finished in the spring of 1826, less than ten months before the composer’s death. Beethoven himself, of course, never actually “heard” the work performed in concert, as its premiere came after his death in early 1827. Schubert, however, did; and after listening to this work, remarked, “After this, what is left for us to write?” The work remains much played by string quartet groups looking for a challenge. But in the later years of the 20th century, a version of the quartet that was expanded to full string orchestra also came to be heard in larger concert venues, one that was likely conceived by Gustav Mahler, whose re-orchestrations of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s works were frequently even more controversial than Leopold Stokowski’s vast enlargements of the organ works of J.S. Bach.
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/LEONARD BERNSTEIN (Deutsche Grammophon)
Included):
STRING QUARTET NO. 16 IN F MAJOR, OP. 135 (FOR STRING ORCHESTRA)
Beethoven: STRING QUARTET NO. 14 IN C SHARP MINOR, OP. 131 (FOR STRING ORCHESTRA)
While many of the string quartets written by Beethoven in his early years, like the symphonies of that same period, were more or less advancing what Mozart and Haydn did, the latter quartets were exceptionally complex. A lot of this was due to the fact that the composer likely didn’t know how challenging his music was because, for the second half of his life, he increasingly became unable to hear sounds only in his mind. One such example, alongside the later string quartets of his younger contemporary Franz Schubert, is the 14th String Quartet, in the fairly dissonant key of C Sharp Minor. Structured in seven uninterrupted movements and averaging forty minutes in length, the work was finished in the spring of 1826, less than ten months before the composer’s death. Beethoven himself, of course, never actually “heard” the work performed in concert, as its premiere came after his death in early 1827. Schubert, however, did; and after listening to this work, remarked, “After this, what is left for us to write?” The work remains much played by string quartet groups looking for a challenge. But in the later years of the 20th century, a version of the quartet that was expanded to full string orchestra also came to be heard in larger concert venues, one that was likely conceived by Gustav Mahler, whose re-orchestrations of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s works were frequently even more controversial than Leopold Stokowski’s vast enlargements of the organ works of J.S. Bach.
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/LEONARD BERNSTEIN (Deutsche Grammophon)
Included):
STRING QUARTET NO. 16 IN F MAJOR, OP. 135 (FOR STRING ORCHESTRA)