For this second volume of Beethoven’s string quartets, the Doric String Quartet has combined one middle period, one late, and two early quartets to create a programme that works on its own terms, as well as forming part of the complete cycle. The musicians start off with a vivid performance of Op. 18 No. 2, following it with the Quartet, Op. 130, in which, as finale, they perform the Große Fugue (Op. 133), as Beethoven long contemplated it. They have appended the alternative finale, first published with Op. 130, thus allowing the listener to choose either version. Op. 18 No. 5 in A major is then followed by Op. 59 No. 2 in E minor. Op. 18, Beethoven’s first set of quartets, often show influences from the quartets of Haydn and Mozart, albeit very much filtered through Beethoven’s original artistic sensibility. The second set, the three ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets, Op. 59, was written in a golden period of the composer’s creative life (alongside the Fourth Symphony, Violin Concerto, and Fidelio) and shows both development from the earlier set and a powerful distinctness. Although mis-understood (or found incomprehensible) by their first audiences, Beethoven’s late quartets have become universally admired as among the pinnacles of western art music. Stravinsky considered the Große Fuge ‘an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever’.
