Beethoven's 'Razumovsky' string quartets - hard work?

[Mal]

"Beethoven's 'Razumovsky' string quartets were never meant to be easy listening – and they are even harder to play." - Edward Dusinberre

I gave up dedicated listening during the third movement of the the third and googled 'Beethoven's 'Razumovsky' string quartets - hard work?' for light relief. But I can't escape, the lead violinist popped up top of the list! At least he also thinks it's hard work, it's not just me.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/nov/05/takacs-quartet-beethoven-razumovsky

"After playing the opening solo from the second movement of the first of the three quartets, cellist Bernhard Romberg [first performer] threw his music to the ground and stamped on it."

The violinist Felix Radicati complained these were "not music".

"They are not for you, but for a later age," Beethoven told his critics.

How much later?

They supposedly express "intense, shifting emotions". I get intense (intense difficulty...). The emotions are perhaps shifting too fast for me to take in!

Would you recommend any other performances of these quartets than the Takács?

[Mal]

Is it that there is so much going on in these quartets that you need to read up on them to have any chance of getting them.

For instance, the Trio section of the third movement of II uses a Thème Russe (“Glory to the Sun”), but its increasingly boisterous repetitions spin out of control and collide to create a series of “wrong” notes. Regarding this practical joke, the American musicologist Joseph Kerman wrote, “It sounds as though Count Razumovsky had been tactless enough to hand Beethoven the tune, and Beethoven is pile-driving it into the ground by way of revenge.”

https://thelistenersclub.com/2022/02/16/beethovens-razumovsky-cycle-string-quartet-no-8-in-e-minor-op-59-no-2/

If the listener knows this he can perhaps get some enjoyment from the piece, but otherwise isn't he just pile driven into the ground (my experience...)

Also, "The primary section of the movement, set in E minor, is propelled forward by cross-rhythms which bears a striking resemblance to the complex grooves of African drumming."

Did Beethoven hear African drums? Where would he have got that from?

[RichardB]

Is it that there is so much going on in these quartets that you need to read up on them to have any chance of getting them.

Surely not.

The responses you quote in the first post are no doubt more to do with how difficult the music is to play than how difficult it is to listen to and understand, and of course these two "difficulties" aren't necessarily connected at all. Plenty of music has been criticised by performers as impossible to play at the time of its writing, because of technical complexities, or expressive unfamiliarity, or both, and Beethoven's music of this period is indeed revolutionary in many ways. But isn't this one of its exciting aspects to the listener rather than an obstacle to be overcome? Besides which the structure of every movement in all three quartets is well delineated and not really hard to follow, and shouldn't require any further explanation or a score in hand, although these may well deepen one's appreciation once the music has become familiar.

I think it's a mistake to focus on "shifting emotions" as if following these would somehow be the key to the music. Emotions aren't encoded into music as simply and straightforwardly as some (including some performers, it appears!) seem to want people to believe. The author of the Guardian article is no doubt trying to bring people to the music but ends up IMO muddying the waters. I don't like the Takács Quartet's recordings of Beethoven, for reasons that come more clearly into focus when reading the article. Apart from this I find their vibrato greatly overdone, and if they start from such an anachronistic approach I'm not going to be very interested in whatever other insights they might have to offer. I've been raving about the Kuijken Quartet's recent recording, which uses "modern" instruments in a historically informed way, and these made a big difference to my appreciation of the music, which I realise I hadn't paid sufficient attention to in the past.

[Bryn]

"I've been raving about the Kuijken Quartet's recent recording . . . "

Have they rerecorded them or are you referring to the SACDs released back in 2010? I got them 10 years ago and wondered a little about the assertion that the Op. 59 quartets were not best suited to being played on instruments available to Beethoven. However, such questions fell to one side upon listening. That said, The Quatuor Mozaiques make a very good fist of the lates, and indeed the Op. 59s, though the latter have not, as yet, received a studio release but have been broadcast from concert performances.

I should add that my interest in these recordings was sparked by http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...521#post202521 et seq.

[smittims]

The Rasumovskys certainly are a big step forward in music compared wih what was before; I felt I had to 'keep up' with them at first. I think they show Beethoven at fully confident creative maturity, having got over the fears of his deafness.

The most revelatory performances I know are by the Budapest and Busch quartets, with the Amadeus, Vegh and Alban Berg close behind.

[RichardB]

"I've been raving about the Kuijken Quartet's recent recording . . . "

Have they rerecorded them or are you referring to the SACDs released back in 2010

Isn't that recent enough?

[Bryn]

Isn't that recent enough?

Well, the Quatuor Mozaiques' broadcasts of the works certainly post-date the Kuijken Quartet's SACDs by some 10 years.

[Bryn]

It might be worth adding that of the Op. 59s, the 3rd has done better out of HIPP recordings, Towards the end of the last century, both the Quatuor Turner and the Schuppanzigh-Quartett recorded it, the latter using Beethoven's own set of instruments.

[RichardB]

Yes indeed; but I think the Kuijken recordings are something special, whatever their HIPP credentials or lack thereof. But this is (I thought) supposed to be a thread to help Mal (hopefully) to the conclusion that the op.59 quartets aren't "hard work", at least no more so than any of Beethoven's other quartets. I don't think that in 2022 one should pay too much attention to what people were saying in 1806 about their difficulty, apart from acknowledging that at the time Beethoven was doing new and unprecedented things with the medium. But, really, it's more than 200 years later, after the quartets of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Bartók, Carter, Ligeti, Cage, Nono, Ferneyhough, Feldman and all the others (note the lack of an Oxford comma there, normally I would have put it in but now I intend to leave it out as often as doesn't interfere with meaning and style), so how "difficult" can Beethoven be in terms of the unprecedented demands his quartets make on players and audiences?

[rauschwerk]

I understand that once you have heard these pieces done in good HIPP performances, you might not want to go back to the 'old' style. But surely generations of listeners 'got' these pieces in various peforming styles before the 1970s?

I can see that it's tempting to read about 'difficult' pieces in the hope that that will help one's appreciation, but really there's no substitute for repeated and concentrated listening, is there?

[Bryn]

Something of an aside but Grammarly pretty much insists upon the use of the Oxford comma, but that's 'American English', of course.

[smittims]

For me, rauschwerk, hearing the Beethoven Quartets in even good HIPP performances just sent me back to the traditionals. I feel they reveal so much more of the essence of the music. HIPP for me is a fascinating and rewarding scientific process but doesn't move me as a good traditional performance does.

[Bryn]

For me, rauschwerk, hearing the Beethoven Quartets in even good HIPP performances just sent me back to the traditionals. I feel they reveal so much more of the essence of the music. HIPP for me is a fascinating and rewarding scientific process but doesn't move me as a good traditional performance does.

Does the use of the word "traditionals" there give pause for thought? 20th Century tradition, maybe, but what about that from the early 19th?

[smittims]

I think recordings made in the early 20th century, before musicians started to listen regularly to playbacks, give a good idea of the way music was played before that. For instance, the trend towards precision seems to date from that point.

[richardfinegold]

I have lived with the Hungarian Quartet for my listening years, but there are dozens of worthwhile recordings. The slow movements of R1&3 are some of the most remarkable music ever penned