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Welcome to the artissimo.gr pages of News ! |
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English Language : Classical Music : News : Spring 2004 
Sunday 30 May 2004 : Classical Era Gold : Beethoven's String Quartets |
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Experiences If someone in the long past just complained about too many notes (**), then, he had better avoid listening to any of the Beethoven's quartets : they are perhaps very sophisticated for his ears ! "Just too many notes" : too many beatifully placed notes, too many musically clever ideas, too many happy passages to electrify, too many mysterious phrases to resolve, just too many new points for morphology of music to gain. This is the true spirit of Ludwig van Beethoven. Everything is fresh new in his inner ears and written with a method and technique of unparalleled quality. Often rushing forwards in an elegant hurry, other times just contemplating about mysteries of music, his phrases are clear and pretty balanced concerning the overall composition architecture and musical flow.  Violins are both singing while viola is commenting the whole passage and cello is underlining the music text : here is the string family at full control. It could be W.A. Mozart's sound as well because of its light colors, but it also has its own very distinctive characteristics : the climaxes built methodically all over the place, the usual sudden bursts of the ensemble - typical Beethoven! - the distinctive humorous scherzos and a complicated labyrinth of morphological ideas and solutions, often too condensed for the listener to catch all of them in only one audition of each composition (***). One could easily notice that his latest quartets are even more sophisticated, bold and well-processed ; they are simply complete and rare masterpieces. This was a simple description of the world of Beethoven's quartets. Everything is made with great wisdom, ultimate technique and incomparable taste. This is also the definition of Beethoven's music world in general. (****) (**) It is about the well-known story about Emperor Joseph telling W.A. Mozart that his latest opera had just too many notes. W.A. Mozart didn't seem to appreciate this comment very much ! (***) Well, I just had to listen at least three times to the beginning of the fourth part of the quartet no.5 in A major (op. 18/5) in order to make a clue of what was really happening there ! (****) Reference performances by Melos Quartett Stuttgard. |
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