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March 2020

Beethoven @ 250: The Danish String Quartet Perform Beethoven's Complete Quartets at Alice Tully Hall

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"Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age." - Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven is always everywhere. A revolutionary figure not just in music but in western culture, Beethoven's music can be heard multiple times each season in every concert hall, every music festival, every occasion that calls for joyous celebration, or sorrowful solemnity. There is little left to be said about Beethoven that hasn't already been said many times by writers and scholars; there is even less to hear that hasn't already been heard to the point of exhaustion.

But, classical music loves its anniversaries, and with 2020 being the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, his music is even more ubiquitous than usual. Here in New York, Carnegie Hall has dedicated a good chunk of its season to Beethoven, featuring complete cycles of the piano sonatas, concertos, and no less than two symphony cycles (one of which just happened.) 

Over at Lincoln Center, there isn't much Beethoven to be heard at the Phil, aside from a performance of the Violin concerto with Joshua Bell (April 1-4). Over at the Met, you'll have to wait until next season to hear Beethoven's sole opera, Fidelio (11/20-12/23), including a performance on his birthday (Dec. 17).

Instead, the heavy lifting seems to have been left to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which for the past 50 years has held court at the warm, womb-like Alice Tull Hall, tucked under Juilliard on the corner of Broadway and 65th St. Among the works by Beethoven that can be heard at CMS this season are an early Clarinet Trio, Op. 11, a Violin Sonata, Op. 12, and Beethoven's very first composition, the Piano Trio, Op. 1.

But, no survey of Beethoven's chamber music would be complete without his sixteen string quartets. Taken together, the quartets are a remarkable document of Beethoven's development as a composer: from the six Op. 18 quartets, written while still in his 20's, to the final quartet in F major, Op. 135, finished just a few months before his death in 1827. Even more than the immortal nine symphonies, the quartets are widely considered to be Beethoven's greatest achievement; the late quartets in particular are counted among the greatest string quartets - if not music, period - ever written.

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