Beethoven’s Last Quartet

Three utterly different statements for string quartet to round out our chamber music series for 2022.

We start with a piece that’s often an encore: Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade is the wittiest of string quartet romps. From Italy, it’s off to the UK. Sally Beamish is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed composers of her generation. Her String Quartet No 2 “Opus California” playfully combines subtle homages to America with themes based on Beethoven’s Opus 18 C minor quartet.

25 years after his Opus 18, Beethoven was profoundly deaf and writing profound, searching, intensely original music, which baffled many of his contemporaries. His sixteenth and final completed quartet, Opus 135, typifies Beethoven’s late period in both looking back to the forms of the Baroque and looking forward to previously unimagined harmonies and melodies.