Your favourite Beethoven string quartet ?

[Barbirollians]

I suppose a bit like choosing a favourite child - invidious and impossible .

Notwithstanding I should say Op132 - it is to me like music from another world - extraordinarily emotional yet , remote - a striven towards perfection but not at all sure what it is about or tells me . I always feel at peace when having heard it though .

[Beef Oven!]

I suppose a bit like choosing a favourite child - invidious and impossible .

Can't be both.

[jayne lee wilson]

OP. 74...
....serene, sunlit, joyful; playful, replete, content....

[Keraulophone]

Op 135, but only when played by the Busch Quartet.

Actually, that probably also applies to Op 131 and 132 on other days of the week.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The old (but nonetheless true) cliché; "Whichever one I happen to be listening to at the time".

BUT - for extra-Musical reasons, Op 132 for me, as well (the first one I studied at University, aged 19: all sorts of memories - Musical and other - associated with the words "the A minor".)


I've just heard the Brodskys play the Op 131 in a concert last week - not how I like to hear it (too much non-stop and unvaried vibrato, and the first violin had serious intonation problems) but the work came through unscathed and indestructible.

And Op 130 (with the Grosse Fuge Finale) is the most astonishing and overwhelming and humbling and empowering and ... and ... and ... and ...

[Richard Barrett]

For me it would have to be op.130/133, which opens up (and not just in the last movement) a new world of musical possibility, structurally/emotionally.

[ostuni]

Yes, I remember the overwhelming experience of hearing op 130 + Grosse Fuge played by the Lindseys - also while at university, some 40+ years ago... (And, since I was on the organising committee, an enjoyable after-concert drink, or 2 or 3, with the quartet: I remember unsuccessfully trying to persuade Peter Cropper of the benefits of what we would now call HIPP)

Nowadays, if I had to pick just one, I think it would be op 131, for the scope of the journey that it traverses, from that other-worldly opening fugue, to the relentless final allegro, with all sorts of riches in between.

[Barbirollians]

Op 74 is indeed lovely- just listening now to the QI recording at my desk on this sunny morning .

[antongould]

Op 74 is indeed lovely- just listening now to the QI recording at my desk on this sunny morning .

Me too on this snowy morning .....

[verismissimo]

... I remember unsuccessfully trying to persuade Peter Cropper of the benefits of what we would now call HIPP...

Perhaps 20 years ago, Peter said to me: 'Of course, you can't help but be influenced by it all...'

[verismissimo]

The one that opened the door for me in the 1960s was the E minor Op 59 No 2 in a recording by the Janacek Quartet.

[teamsaint]

The one that opened the door for me in the 1960s was the E minor Op 59 No 2 in a recording by the Janacek Quartet.

not maybe a door opener for me, Verers, but I agree that is an absolutely superb recording and well worth seeking out.

It is available in the Westminster Legacy box, and hopefully elsewhere too.

[ahinton]

Well, this is The Unanswerable Question if ever there was one. Yes, the one that I've just listened to is obviously the easiest answer, but it's hardly helpful.

No. 4 seems to me to be the most powerful of the Op. 18 set, but I suppose that my problem in trying to address this question would be in choosing any one from Op. 74 onwards and this just isn't possible. Op. 127 means a great deal to me, not least because the E flat tonality of its first movement seems to be followed by an E flat tonality that breathes the air of another planet altogether in the second movement's opening (although there's vastly more to attract the attention throughout the work; the pithy brevity of Op. 135 that seems as though the expansiveness of its four immediate predecessors has been concentgrated as far as possible. I agree with Richard Barrett about Op. 130/133 and with fhg about the A minor one but I think that if someone held a gun at my head I'd probably have to plump for Op. 131 which I heard several years ago in a stunning performance by Quatuor Diotima in a programme otherwise devoted to 20th century quartets (including David Matthews' Sixth) and there was no doubting which of the works sounded the most modern...

[french frank]

The one that opened the door for me in the 1960s was the E minor Op 59 No 2 in a recording by the Janacek Quartet.

One of the Razumovskys for me too, not sure which one but can still hear it in my head: it was one of my first LPs and was a strange experiment(?) where the players had microphones fixed to the surface of their instruments. Not very satisfactory.

Now Op 132 and seldom go back earlier than Op 127.

[Serial_Apologist]

In listening yesterday (coincidentally) to all the late quartets from Op 127, in the order in which Beethoven composed them, I was struck how each one managed to impact more strongly on me than its predecessor. I don't know of any similar experiences from the last words of any other composer.