David Zinman

String Quartets Op.59 & 29 David Zinman

Around the time the Rasumovski Quartet's were written, Beethovens favorite violinist, Ignaz von Schuppanzigh had begun the very first professional string quartet, thus providing Beethoven with an ideal laboratory for testing new string quartet ideas. Before this, string quartet playing was more something that happened in living rooms. Amateurs of, grantedly, good musical quality would entertain themselves among friends by playing string quartets. By writing for the Schuppanzigh quartet, which moreover would perform in public concert series, Beethoven became involved with a wholly new setting. ¬Naturally, he turned the prospect entirely to his advantage; from then on he could do as he wished in his string quartets. "It is really almost unimaginable that the six opus 18 and the Rasumovsky quartets were a mere 5 years apart. You feel that when Beethoven wrote his opus 59 it was really 'boiling over' in his head. In relation to opus 18, which still leaned heavily on Haydn's way of writing, this music is much more abstract. The string quartet must be the most abstractive apparatus in existence. That instrumental setting asks as it were that the composer dive into the essence of tonality and start making abstractions. With four entirely equal voices and the scarcest of means, Beethoven builds nearly exalted constructions. Everything that happens in this music is absolutely essential. Beethoven announces in this opus 59 an entirely new era in music."

"In Beethoven's later music it gets less and less necessary to play on early instruments. This music is not merely less connected to specific instruments than Beethoven's earlier works, it is outright futuristic. The question brings to mind Beethoven's rather testy retort when Schuppanzigh commented that his music seemed at times unplayable: "Do you actually believe that I am thinking of your miserable violin when I compose?" (Sigiswald, Sara and Veronica Kuijken speaking about Beethoven's opus 59) The Kuijken String Quartet has already exists almost twenty years . , make up an ensemble, which can play these recordings in a way that practically no other can.