CMNW LIVE from Austin: Miró Quartet’s Beethoven Finale
In this new exclusive performance from Austin, TX, the Miró Quartet will conclude their year-long cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets with Opus 131 – considered by Beethoven his greatest achievement in the quartet form – and Opus 135 and 130 Finale, his last compositions before his death.
Premieres July 11 @ 7 pm PT
Available through July 12 @ 11:59 pm PT
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- BEETHOVEN String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 (39’)Opus 131 is played as one continuous piece, without pause between its seven sections:
I. Adagio ma non troppo
II. Allegro molto vivace
III. Allegro moderato
IV. Andante ma non troppo
V. Presto
VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante
VII. AllegroLudwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131, dates to 1825–26. Like all of his late quartets, Opus 131 pushes the string quartet’s boundaries to previously unimaginable places. It is officially in seven movements, but it might be more constructive to consider it as a single vast movement, as there is no true break between them.
Beethoven’s publisher had asked him to send an “original” work, and so Beethoven included the comment “Assembled together with pilferings from one thing and another” with his completed score. The publisher didn’t get the joke, and Beethoven had to assure him that it was indeed an original work. And original it is.
The opening Adagio is an austere but expressive fugue reflecting Beethoven’s intensive study of Johann Sebastian Bach’s counterpoint. Beethoven pushes the boundaries of tonality, taking the listed key of C-sharp Minor only as a brief starting point and transitioning subtly but frequently through related and unrelated key areas. The Allegro molto vivace is a dance movement with a light, folklike theme that seems to constantly ascend.
The severe third movement emulates recitative and allows for a transition in key and character to the graceful theme of the fourth movement theme and variations. By this point, Beethoven’s theme and variations were integrated, unpredictable, and wide-ranging, building out in all directions from the original theme in often idiosyncratic ways.
The fifth movement Presto breaks out from a sudden staccato cello motif based around an E Major triad. Scherzo-like in character but in duple meter, the flow is often interrupted.
The minor-mode sixth movement provides a solemn transition to the sonata form seventh movement Allegro, back in C-sharp minor. The abrupt, angular first theme fades into a more lyrical second theme that seems to descend into the earth. In a vast development of the themes, the two ideas trade back and forth at a rapid-fire pace, with other unrelated ideas occasionally finding their way in.
—Ethan Allred
- BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F Major, Op.135
Miró Quartet
New exclusive performance!
See our Program Book for program notes.
- BEETHOVEN Finale: Allegro from String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130
Miró Quartet
New exclusive performance!
See our Program Book for program notes.