Quatuor à cordes 13 - Grosse fugue

Description

From 1799 to 1826, in barely three decades, Beethoven broke free from the legacy of Mozart and Haydn. The chamber music works that emerge in this period reveal their experimental and continuous character. These are not quartets that follow one another, but a cycle that takes shape. The increase in the number of movements is the consequence of a new logic. The public, performers, and publishers get lost in these scores, labyrinths of thought. So much so that the Great Fugue, the original finale of the Thirteenth Quartet, was separated from the work. Beethoven himself acknowledged the extreme complexity of the piece and agreed to compose a new finale. The Talich were the first to bring the great Bohemian tradition to record. The impact caused by their keen sense of the diverse styles Beethoven explored, their flawless musicality, their innate sense of improvisation, and above all the extreme dramatic quality of their reading remains just as striking.