Arianna String Quartet

Arianna String Quartet – Ludwig van Beethoven: The Late Quartets (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 04:05:44 minutes | 4,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Centaur Records, Inc.

These six works are Beethoven’s last major completed compositions. Extremely complex and largely misunderstood by musicians and audiences of Beethoven’s day, the late quartets are now widely considered to be among the greatest musical compositions of all time and have inspired many later composers.

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Arianna String Quartet – Beethoven: The Middle Quartets (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:42:01 minutes | 2,54 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Centaur Records, Inc.

Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, commissioned Beethoven to write the three quartets of Op.59 in 1805 for the Schuppanzigh Quartet. The Count was an amateur violinist and frequently played as second violinist with the Schuppanzigh Quartet, a group he funded and whose members were considered to be some of Vienna’s finest string players. In his commission, Count Razumovsky’s only specific request of Beethoven was that Russian folk tunes be significantly featured in the music. Beethoven fulfilled this request in two of the three quartets, but with melodies that are, as he put it, “real or imitated” Russian themes. The Op.59 set was completed in 1806, after the “Eroica” Symphony of 1803, six years after his earlier Op. 18 quartets, and immediately following the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” Piano Sonatas. In the three-year period of 1803-06, Beethoven completed his Fourth Piano concerto, Piano Sonata in F, Op.54, his Triple Concerto, 3 Leonore Overtures, the three Op.59 quartets and his opera Fidelio, thereby demonstrating his mastery of the genres of the symphony, sonata, concerto, opera and string quartet. With the publication of the Op.59 quartets, Beethoven moved the genre of the string quartet out of the small “chamber” setting and onto a larger stage. Each of the Op.59 quartets stands as a monumental individual work, both in terms of literal size and dramatic scope.

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