麻豆约拍

Stephen Johnson explores his favourite Beethoven quartet, the Quartet in C, from Beethoven's Opus 59 series. They were commissioned in 1806 by Count Razumovsky, who was the Russian Ambassador to Vienna and a keen amateur violinist. The quartets clearly reveal Beethoven's intellectual strengths to be at their height, yet their conception and length mystified contemporaries when they were first heard. Given the admiration they would receive subsequently, Beethoven showed remarkable prescience when he said, "..they are not for you but for a later age!".