Beethoven for a Later Age: The Journey of a String Quartet

"He’s the first violin of the Takács Quartet . This ensemble was originally all Hungarian, but it’s now multinational. I think they’ve only got one or two of the original members left, but it’s one of the world’s great string quartets. Its leader happens to be English, and he happens to write very well. In part it’s his journey with the quartet because he joined very young. They deliberately wanted to take in a young, but extremely gifted and sensitive violinist so they could kind of mould him to their own vision. Beethoven’s string quartets are some of the most demanding ever written and definitely the most rewarding. The late string quartets are, to many people, his ultimate masterpieces. They’re full of mystery and extraordinary sound worlds. Dusinberre has spent his whole career delving into these pieces, and writes very clearly and beautifully about them. I write programme notes and I find that writing about late Beethoven is one of the most difficult things you can possibly do, but he makes it sound effortless. He conveys the wonder of playing these pieces, of the absolute ecstasy of mastering them and of being at one with them. So, it is a book that anyone who loves music can read and enjoy. There’s a little technical terminology, but you can still share this beautiful journey that he’s experiencing. It’s not as easy to answer as all that. He was commissioned to write five quartets by, I think, the Tsar of Russia, and they were premiered in Saint Petersburg. So, the last five string quartets are the ones that are usually classified as the late works, but then there’s an extra bit because he wrote this incredible thing called the Grosse Fuge , the great fugue, which was going to be the finale of Op. 130. His publisher got back to him and said something like, ‘You know what? No one’s going to be able to play this. For goodness sake replace it with something a bit more manageable.’ And Beethoven very uncharacteristically agreed. He wrote a new finale and then they published the Grosse Fuge separately as Op. 133. So, it’s a question of whether you count that as a work in its own right, or whether it belongs to Quartet No. 13. That’s why numbering them is a little bit difficult. It’s very much about life in a string quartet. The two things complement each other beautifully, I think."