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Beethoven: Late String Quartets

Classical / Classical era · 1951–52

Beethoven: Late String Quartets

Budapest String Quartet

베토벤: 후기 현악4중주 · 부다페스트 현악4중주단

Why listen

Seven connected movements and a long central hymn show how four string instruments can organise radically different spans of time.

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Tracks · previews

English editorial edition

Album story

Two violins, viola and cello can change the scale of music without increasing the ensemble. In Beethoven’s late quartets, the number of movements, their connections and the spacing of returns become expressive decisions. Op. 131 places brief links beside an extended variation movement; Op. 132 gives considerable weight to its central slow movement. Those designs offer a more useful entrance than the reputation of the works as forbiddingly difficult.

This programme brings together Quartets Nos. 12–16 and the Grosse Fuge from the Budapest Quartet’s 1951–1952 mono cycle. Five Sony digital volumes from its 2018 reissue supply twenty-seven tracks. Op. 130 includes the replacement finale, with the fugue presented separately. Track boundaries therefore identify movements without prescribing a fresh musical beginning at every click. In Op. 131, particularly, short connecting sections contribute to the direction of the whole.

An opening built from successive entries

Op. 131 starts with a slow fugue. Each new entrance joins lines already in progress, making a simple division between soloist and accompaniment inadequate. The opening lasts nearly seven minutes here, while the third section takes less than one. Such unequal proportions are part of the architecture: seven movements do not mean seven equivalent blocks of music laid side by side.

Two kinds of motion inside one movement

The central movement of Op. 132 alternates a slow hymn with a more active Andante. Remember the first kind of motion when the second arrives, then notice what the return changes in your response. Its nearly sixteen minutes accommodate more than one state. The convalescent thanksgiving associated with the movement is realised through a sequence of contrasting sections, rather than one unbroken musical posture.

A separate place for the fugue

The selected sequence retains Op. 130’s later finale and presents the Grosse Fuge separately, after Op. 132. It does not reconstruct the original ending of the earlier quartet. Both endings remain available as distinct experiences. Op. 135 then returns to four movements, reminding us that the late works do not share a single formal solution simply because they are grouped together.

The album through its tracks

Follow successive entries in Op. 131’s opening fugue, then the larger alternation of hymn and Andante in Op. 132’s central movement.

  1. String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131: I. Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo

    This slow fugue opens the seven-movement quartet and lasts about six minutes fifty-two seconds in the selected edition. Remember the first line, then attend to what continues beneath each subsequent entrance. New beginnings accumulate rather than simply replacing previous material. Moving attention towards viola and cello helps reveal the four-part texture beyond the most immediately audible violin. The selected file is the first movement, not a single file containing the entire quartet. Continue through the remaining six movements to experience its connected design. The brief preview can introduce the texture, but cannot show how the later links and variations change the significance of this opening.

    Reference · Chamber Music Society — Beethoven Op. 131 structure

  2. String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132: III. Molto adagio - Andante

    At roughly fifteen minutes fifty seconds, this central movement needs more than the description of a quiet thanksgiving. Its slow hymn alternates with a more active Andante, so the changing relationship between sections matters as much as the opening mood. Remember the chordal character of the first passage, then compare the rhythmic movement that follows. Returning material carries the memory of what has intervened. A brief preview cannot represent that complete alternation; the whole movement makes its proportions apparent. This is the third movement from the specified Budapest mono recording, not a later remake or an arrangement detached from the original quartet programme.

    Reference · Los Angeles Philharmonic — Beethoven Op. 132 programme note

Listen next

Continue to the Alban Berg Quartet and Heinrich Schiff in Schubert’s String Quintet, comparing the bass and inner-part possibilities created by adding a second cello.

Schubert: String Quintet in C ↗
References & editorial note

Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.