TRACKLISTING

CD 1
1-4 Quartet in F major, op.59 no.1 “Razumovsky”
5-8 Quartet in E flat major, op.74 “Harp”

CD 2
1-4 Quartet in E minor, op.59 no.2 “Razumovsky”
5-8 Quartet in C major, op.59 no.3 “Razumovsky”

RECORDING INFORMATION

This is the first of three releases in which the Takács Quartet perform the complete Beethoven string quartets. Each set comes at a special price in multipack format.

The Takács Quartet thrilled the critics with their Bartók quartet cycle released in 1998. The set won a Gramophone Award and was nominated for a Grammy. Recent releases from the Quartet (Dvorák and Mozart/Schubert/Wolf with Andreas Haefliger) all highlight their polished but warm and intensely musical playing.

Now the Takács have embarked upon Beethoven’s complete string quartets, the pinnacle of chamber music repertoire. This first set to be released contains the middle string quartets (op.59 and op.74). Then will come the early quartets (in 2003), followed by the late quartets, plus Op.95 and the Grosse Fuge (in 2004).

The Op.59 quartets were commissioned in 1806 by Count Andreas Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna, a great music lover who sometimes played second violin himself. The “Harp” Quartet, op.74, was written in 1809 and dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz. Though written at a time of war, the quartet is one of his most gentle and “unproblematic”. Though modern listeners are apt to look to the late quartets as containing Beethoven’s greatest music of all, these middle quartets are full of invention and music of great beauty. An early admirer wrote that the supremely tragic Adagio molto (op.59 no.1), “would comfort me even if I were dying”.