Presumed Beethoven. The Six String Quartets Anh. 2

Description

In 1927, on the occasion of the first centenary of Beethoven’s death, the renowned French musicologist Saint-Foix drew attention to an anonymous manuscript collection of six quartets, which once belonged to the publisher Domenico (III) Artaria and is now preserved at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. He put forward the hypothesis that these pieces could be the first experiments of an adolescent Beethoven in a genre he would make his own after the age of thirty with the publication of Op. 18. On the basis of this theory, the collection was included in the Beethoven catalogue, although among the works of doubtful attribution, where it remains pending further musicological research. With the first world recording of the Six Quartets Anh. 2, the Quartetto Alla Maniera Italiana brings back into the spotlight a precious chamber-music collection still surrounded by mystery, in a historically informed performance based on the study of the Berlin separate parts, thus offering an original contribution to the imminent bicentenary of Beethoven’s death.