String Quartets in the Diamond: Quatuor Ébène – Beethoven's String Quartets (2:6)
Hear Beethoven’s 16 string quartets across six concerts in the Queen’s Hall as the French star quartet Quatuor Ébène returns to The Black Diamond. This evening’s programme features Nos. 7 and 3.
What do Beethoven's string quartets sound like 200 years after the composer's death?
In 2020, to mark Beethoven’s 250th birthday, Quatuor Ébène released all 16 of Beethoven's string quartets. The recordings were made all over the world, from Nairobi to Melbourne, and they received great praise for their contemporary interpretation.
Quatuor Ébène itself describes Beethoven's music as "music that expresses itself freely and that addresses the audience of the future rather than its own time."
Beethoven's 16 string quartets have taken pride of place in the chamber music repertoire, and they show his creative development as a composer. From the earliest Viennese Classical string quartets written in the wake of the genre's earlier masters, Haydn and Mozart, through the "middle period" when Beethoven broke with tradition and made the genre his own, and to his late string quartets written in the years leading up to his death, which have been called some of the most sublime music ever written.
String Quartet No. 3, No. 8 and No. 11
String Quartet No. 3 is from Opus 18, Beethoven's first collection of string quartets (nos. 1-6), which was composed between 1798 and 1800 during Beethoven's early period, written in the Viennese Classical style.
Although the string quartet was published as No. 3, it was the first string quartet Beethoven ever composed. The first movements of the work are lyrical and pensive, but the last one leaps forward with propulsive energy! The String Quartet is dedicated to Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian von Lobkowitz, who was known for his interest in music and later became Beethoven’s patron.
String Quartets No. 8 and No. 11 are from Beethoven's "middle period", also called his "heroic" period, characterised by a more dramatic, expressive and romantic expression. String Quartet No. 8 is the second of three of the so-called Razumovsky Quartets,commissioned by the Russian ambassador Count Andrey Razumovsky in 1805.
The three string quartets represented a serious break with tradition, and Beethoven truely transformed the genre into something distinctly his own. All three string quartets contain clear Russian themes, as Razumovsky desired, which is especially evident in String Quartet No. 8.
The String Quartet No. 11 is the last work of Beethoven's middle period and forms a stark contrast to the three Razumovsky Quartets. It is a powerful work written in a minor key, and Beethoven himself gave it the subtitle “Quartet Serioso”. The String Quartet No. 11 is the last string quartet Beethoven wrote before taking a break from the genre for more than ten years, and the work also contains passages displaying the “sublime” qualities that characterise his later quartets.
The performers
Quatuor Ébène:
Pierre Colombet, violin
Gabriel Le Magadure, violin
Marie Chilemme, viola
Yuya Okamoto, cello
Quatuor Ébène was formed in 1999 at the conservatoire in Boulogne-Billancourt. Since then, the quartet has performed at internationally renowned venues such as Wigmore Hall in London and Carnegie Hall in New York. Their performances of Ludwig van Beethoven’s string quartets have also been heard at Philharmonie de Paris and Alte Oper in Frankfurt.
The quartet itself describes the string quartet as the musical form of democracy, in which each musician steps forward with their own voice while the whole emerges through shared interplay, attentiveness and mutual understanding.
