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String Quartets op. 59, String Quintet op. 29
Ludwig van Beethoven

String Quartets op. 59, String Quintet op. 29

Kuijken Quartet

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: SACD
Barcode: 0608917236224
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Catalog number: CC 72362
Releasedate: 07-02-11
The Rasumovki Quartets are Beethoven masterworks in which Beethoven reaches more and more abstraction and were all instruments are of equal value. In this interpratation by the famous Kuijken family they play on modern instruments instead of period ones. The Kuijken are advocates of authentic instrumentation but that does not mean that specific music can be played even better on modern ones. That all depends on the pieces itself, and with this music, with all its technical difficulties and its depth, these modern strings fit so well.
  • The members of the quartet are internationally recognized soloists
  • Sigiswald Kuijken is the famous early music conductor of la Petite Bande
  • The Kuijken Quartet nowadays exists of the older generation (Wieland, Sigiswald and Marleen and new generation Kuijkens (Sara and Veronica)
  • The Kuijkens play on modern instruments because the these more mature quartets do not specifically need period instrumentation
  • In February 2007, Sigiswald Kuijken has received an honorary doctorate of the Catholic University of Leuven.
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.