Approximate performance time of the fifth movement is seven minutes.
In the second decade of the 19th century, Beethoven became far less productive as a composer. Beethoven struggled with his health, and after the death of his brother, the composer also became embroiled in fierce and protracted custody litigation over his nephew Karl. The general belief in Vienna was that Beethoven’s incomparable career had run its course. Beethoven’s friend, Anton Schindler, recalled that when Beethoven heard these rumors, he replied: “Wait a while; you will soon learn differently.” And in the final decade of his life, Beethoven composed several of his greatest and most adventurous works—for solo piano, the Sonatas, Opus 109-111, and the Diabelli Variations, the String Quartets Nos. 12-16 and Grosse Fugue, his choral masterpiece, the Missa solemnis, and the Ninth Symphony.
It is perhaps in the Late String Quartets that Beethoven most brilliantly displays an awe-inspiring range and depth of expression, achieved in great part by his willingness to journey beyond traditional forms. In the B-flat Major Quartet, for example, the work is cast not in the standard four movements, but in six. The breadth and variety of emotions in the Late Quartets, often juxtaposed one immediately upon the other, seem to presage the late-Romantic works of such composers as Gustav Mahler.
- Cavatina: Adagio molto espressivo—The Cavatina is the Quartet’s second and final slow-tempo movement. According to Karl Holz, Beethoven’s friend, and second violinist in the Schuppanzigh Quartet (which gave the first public performances of several of the Late Quartets):
For (Beethoven), the crowning achievement of his quartet writing, and his favorite piece, was the E-flat Cavatina in ¾ time from the Quartet in B-flat Major. He actually composed it in tears of melancholy (in the summer of 1825) and confessed to me that his own music had never had such an effect on him before, and then even thinking back to that piece cost him fresh tears.
Program notes by Ken Meltzer
