String Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6 - Cello

View full details Read reviews Listen to samples Watch videos. The Complete String Quartets Vol. They play with extraordinary strenuousness, very unlike the Alban Berg Quartet with whom they studied. The Belceas re-enact the creative torments of the composer to a degree where you feel their In stock Usually despatched within 1 working day. View full details Read reviews. The Complete String Quartets Volume 6.

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Wigmore Hall Live Series: Add CD to basket. View full details Listen to samples Watch videos. We now fast-forward three or four years. While at work on The Creation in , Joseph Haydn was also devoting time to the completion of six string quartets. This cycle would be published two years later as Opus By , when Haydn wrote the two quartets published as Op. Up to that point, Beethoven — younger by about 38 years — had avoided public comparison with Haydn by pointedly avoiding the genres that had made the senior composer famous: Beethoven had concentrated instead on other chamber combinations, such as his piano trios and the famous Septet, Op.

Then, in , he stepped boldly into the string quartet arena with his six Quartets, Op.

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The Viennese intelligentsia was astonished. Why then, did he stop at two, never to bring another to completion?

Was the celebrated composer of The Creation now too shy to be compared with Beethoven, the upstart darling of Vienna? Apparently, that may have been the case, as had happened after Mozart made a splash in Vienna with his piano concertos and operas.

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Haydn then had avoided those genres. Now a young string- quartet rival loomed, and the aging Haydn simply backed off. Robbins Landon puts it this way: Various movements of the Opp. Beethoven had formally received the torch — but for a while, both composers ran with it. The jaunty development deconstructs melodies to their core notes, trading these motives between the instruments one after another. Atypically, Beethoven puts the minuet second, and it is unusually substantial.

Beethoven: String Quartet No. 6 in B flat major, Op. 18 No. 6 (page 1 of 10) | Presto Classical

It begins with a violin duet on a distinguished but lyrical theme, an idea that is varied later on in the first section. The trio is dancelike, with a simple romantic melody heard over an oscillating cello rhythm.

The Andante cantabile third movement is a theme and variations. The simple theme in D major is varied in fugue-like manner, with triplet arpeggiation, then with the viola and cello taking the melodic lead with a solemn and smooth ensemble, and finally with an energetic, dancelike variation in which the lower instruments bounce around below a shimmering violin trill. The final Allegro is built on interlocking four-note motives, an idea developed more or less consistently throughout the movement until its serene finale.

The development becomes more frantic, melding the two themes by repeating the first theme in descending thirds. The second movement Adagio affetuoso ed appassionato is aria-like, but it relies on repeated motives rather than carefully composed melodies for its unity.

The Opus 18 Project

A lengthy series of silences follows its climax; an idea Beethoven must have learned from Haydn. The Scherzo keeps a bouncy perpetual motion going, with Haydn-like humor. Its trio features explosive violin runs contrasted with more dancelike rhythms. The final Allegro is a rondo whose main theme interrupts sections of escalating rhythmic intensity with a dramatic scale down to three staccato notes. Beethoven finishes in Mozart-like fashion: A passionate dialogue between first violin and cello emerges at the core of the development, with one instrument playing a more complex melody and the other responding with a simplified version.

It is a fugue-like scherzo, using several subjects to build imitative entrances. This scherzo does not fit the mold internally either, as the trio section is more of a development section that lasts until the end. Back in C minor, it is marked by an ascending chromatic scale, balanced by an arpeggiated, pastoral trio. The final Allegro, a rondo, begins in a furious tone with a violin run that dissolves in a series of staccato chords. The ensuing sections contrast significantly with the main theme, suddenly lyrical or contemplative, until a final prestissimo version of the theme.

The development is two-faced, building to a dramatic, quasi-Baroque climax but also dwelling in the calmness of the first theme for lengthy moments. The ensuing Andante con moto is energetic for a slow movement, balancing the relatively restrained first movement. The scherzo though not marked as such , is back to D major, its motion frequently halted by pauses and sudden harmonic shifts. Its trio goes to D minor with dramatic violin runs.

The final Presto is a unique experiment in duo and trio writing, with insistent tarantella-like melodies pairing subsets of the quartet in constant motion. Its momentum threatens to die away, but only for a moment, and the players are kept quite busy until the surprise ending. Striking, they catch the ear off guard and add a touch of playfulness and wit. In the recurring opening theme of the songful Poco adagio, the first violin floats high in its register.

Episodes of bleakness and gloom are interspersed, yet they dissipate upon the returns of ethereal opening material, as when rays of light peek through the clouds of a gray sky. As he so often does, Beethoven uses the scherzo movement not as a light diversion, but as a chapter of great tension and conflict. It might be no accident that the ubiquitous short-short-short-long motive, the musical building block of the Fifth Symphony, appears throughout: For the finale, the composer devises an inventive set of variations, among his most famous instrumental forms.

The innocent melody that inspires these variations, however, is not without its playful quirks: It certainly has a lighter tone than the other late quartets, and it is in the pastoral key of F major. Yet critics calling it a regression to 18th-century style overemphasize their point, as in comparison with any of his early quartets this one could only be considered radical.

The first movement Allegretto is essentially in sonata form. It demonstrates a lesson Beethoven had learned from Haydn: Its rhythmic trajectory could be described as a series of interjections, punctuated by jocular runs and arpeggios. Humorous fade-outs are suddenly interrupted, and the final chord, which is actually on the first beat of the measure, jumps out of nowhere from the preceding syncopation.

The third movement, in the distant key of D-flat major, is a cavatina, or a simple, relatively unadorned aria in the Italian style. It recalls the similar movement in Opus quartet, and its sweet and sincere melody could not contrast more from the preceding Scherzo. Apparently an acquaintance of Beethoven asked for a score of the earlier Opus quartet.

Yes, take out your wallet! For both performers and audience if at any moment one becomes distracted from the music, some of the built-in tension and challenge that Beethoven provides is lost. Performers have equated performing these quartets to walking a tightrope: That said, even today, centuries removed from its premiere, the strident, grating chords at its opening sound as shocking as ever: After wandering in tonal ambiguity of the introduction, Beethoven launches into a confident C major Allegro whose primary subjects are, in essence, simple scales and arpeggios.

The composer masterfully weaves a form out of musical material that in other hands would hardly make for a melody. The thudding cello pizzicatos that open the second movement add an element of dread to the Molto adagio, and at each return it seems as inevitable as the slow ticking of time. A graceful minuet follows, providing a much needed moment of relaxation, before leading directly into the Finale.

Here, Beethoven deceives us into believing that he will provide something akin to a classical canon. Each instrument enters in tandem with the opening theme, just as we might expect. The silent measure that follows feels like an eternity, after which the composer whispers a secretive theme, followed by yet more silence. Throughout the movement, Beethoven plays with our sense of momentum, and in juxtaposing moods of confidence and hesitation, creates a feeling a tension that even the timid ending scarcely seems to resolve.

In the presto Finale, listen for the almost frantic back-and-forth of major and minor modes, as the music spills forth into a manic tarantella at its conclusion. This exuberant piece is followed by a soberly ornate slow movement in E fiat, with touches of mystery here and there, serving to relieve the general tone rather than to search depths. One of Beethoven's most astonishing scherzos follows.

Its remarkable rhythmic disruptions could have occurred at any time in his life, and if this piece had cropped up in one of the late quartets nobody would have questioned it. The Trio displays a wild and difficult violin solo, a phenomenon we find also in the trios of Opp and A slow introduction, 'La Malinconia', full of daring shifts of harmony and texture, begins the last movement.

It is justly one of the most celebrated passages in early Beethoven — he asks for it to be played with the greatest delicacy. It recurs later in the course of the following cheerful major movement, which may possibly have its origin in one of Haydn's weaker finales, the one in the 'Sunrise' Quartet, Op 76 No 4, of which the surprising and for Haydn rare helplessness is not improved upon by Beethoven.

Maybe Beethoven's cheerfulness should not be thought of as a cure for the melancholy — perhaps it is part of it, with its sense of helpless circling. But we must avoid special pleading. Whatever we may feel about the conclusion of the B flat Quartet, the whole is a work of genius.