The greatness of Beethoven cast a long shadow. It was Brahms whose First Symphony was long delayed by the intensity with which the composer felt “the tramp of such a giant behind you”. And the shadow ...

String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1: I. Allegro con brio String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1: II. Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato String Quartet in F ...

The Tákacs Quartet are in the process of recording the complete Beethoven quartets; this is the second volume. The Op.18 quartets were Beethoven’s first foray into the genre and are too often ...

The numbering may suggest otherwise but Op 18 No 3 was the first string quartet Beethoven composed. One theory for the change of order is that this D major work was too strange, too full of struggles ...

The key of C minor generally found Beethoven in passionate mood – think of the ‘Pathétique’ piano sonata, for example – and the fourth quartet is no exception. From the stabbing accents of the very ...

Beethoven: String Quartets Op 18 No 1, Op 127 on facebook (opens in a new window) Beethoven: String Quartets Op 18 No 1, Op 127 on linkedin (opens in a new window) ...

Soloist-led string quartets on disc stretch from the Rose, Busch and Paganini Quartets (the latter led by the brilliant Polish violinist Henri Temianka) to the (Thomas) Zehetmair and Chiaroscuro ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Endless invention, and a vision of things to come. Beethoven's last two string quartets in his early ...

The six string quartets which make up his Op. 18 were composed in Beethoven’s late twenties, and consequently imbued with less of the youthful enthusiasm and optimism one might expect of a composer’s ...

The presentation of this imminent release from the Allegri String Quartet needs a bit of clarification. First, however, it features fine performances of three of Beethoven's six opus 18 Quartets, the ...

My usual policy of never reading booklet notes before I write about an album under consideration paid off handsomely in the case of this closing chapter of the Calidore Quartet’s Beethoven cycle, ...