Beethoven String Quartets on record

[Bryn]

I know someone who rates real highly the op 134 on Naxos, he says that it brings out the poise, the classical elegance, in the music, and he yearns for a quartet performance like that. I once though I'd found it -- here

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arditti-Vol.../dp/B00000321W . . .

Yes, I have that recording, purchased around the time of its release (for the other works it contains). I still do not much like it as a stand-alone work, the Ardittis' playing notwithstanding. I feel happier with the Alla danza tedesca movement used in the soundtrack for a scene in Joss Whedon's Firefly.

[RichardB]

What is necessary about it? It just seems grossly inflated to me.

I would say the scale of the fugue is "necessary" in order to counterbalance all the movements that come before it. At least Beethoven seems to have thought so, before he let himself be talked into offering a replacement, for which he received an extra payment, by which time the Schuppanzigh quartet had already premiered the quartet with the fugue as finale.

I'm not an uncritical worshipper of Beethoven by any means, although I do generally admire most those works of his which express an indifference towards convention, but if my impression of a Beethoven work was that it was "grossly inflated" I think I would first assume that Beethoven knew what he wanted to do and how to do it, and did it to his own satisfaction (apparently he was highly annoyed that two of the earlier movements and not the fugue that were encored at the premiere) so that reaction would say more about me than about the music. But then this movement fills me with wonder every time I hear it, and does so even more when it comes at the conclusion of the B flat quartet. Besides which I don't subscribe to the "less is more" idea.

[silvestrione]

I would say the scale of the fugue is "necessary" in order to counterbalance all the movements that come before it. At least Beethoven seems to have thought so, before he let himself be talked into offering a replacement, for which he received an extra payment, by which time the Schuppanzigh quartet had already premiered the quartet with the fugue as finale.

I'm not an uncritical worshipper of Beethoven by any means, although I do generally admire most those works of his which express an indifference towards convention, but if my impression of a Beethoven work was that it was "grossly inflated" I think I would first assume that Beethoven knew what he wanted to do and how to do it, and did it to his own satisfaction (apparently he was highly annoyed that two of the earlier movements and not the fugue that were encored at the premiere) so that reaction would say more about me than about the music. But then this movement fills me with wonder every time I hear it, and does so even more when it comes at the conclusion of the B flat quartet. Besides which I don't subscribe to the "less is more" idea.

You're right, 'grossly inflated' came out too pat and just reflects on me. I suppose I meant 'hugely out of proportion'. At least with the 'Hammerklavier' you sense the heroic scale from the very opening bars, and so know that the finale must match the huge scale of the rest. I agree with JLW that Op. 130 up to that point feels like a different genre, really, not too far from a suite.