Beethoven, String Quartet Op 59 No 1

The son of a Ukrainian peasant whose life was changed thanks to Catherine II for favors received, the young Count Andréi Razumovsky, also a violinist, was proud to have studied Haydn's quartets with the composer himself. For this reason, he had sometimes played second violin in the Schuppanzigh Quartet that entertained the soirées at the home of Prince Lichnowsky, Beethoven's patron. In 1790, Razumovsky had been appointed ambassador of the Russian Empire in Austria and since then he had been living in Vienna, distant from peasantry.

Razumovsky's commission

On the occasion of these evenings, he met Beethoven, and in 1805 he ventured to ask the master to compose a series of string quartets, which, although he did not specify in number, must necessarily be inspired by Russian tunes or in imitation of them. In case Beethoven was not sufficiently familiar with Russian music, he gave him a good batch of folk songs.

But the master from Bonn paid little attention to the recommendations of the personage despite his high investiture and only included themes from Russian folklore in two of the three quartets -known today as "Razumovsky Quartets". He finally delivered them to the count at the end of 1806, after eight months of work – while simultaneously composing the Leonora Overture No. 3 and the Fourth Symphony –, thus adding three more works to the production in the genre started in 1801 with the Six Quartets of opus 18, dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky.

String Quartet Op 59 No 1 in F major

The first quartet of the trilogy includes in its final movement one of the Russian melodies provided by Razumovsky, for whom Beethoven did not spare titles when writing the dedication: "[...] Count Razumovsky, Privy Councillor of His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, Senator, Knight of the Orders of Saint Andrew and Alexander Nevski and Grand Cross First Class of the Order of Saint Wladimir". A few years later, the Count will add to these credentials the title of Prince.

Quartets for a future era

Premiered by the Schuppanzigh Quartet at the Razumovski Palace in Vienna, the Opus 59 string quartets suffered the same fate as his first symphonies in those years, provoking dismay and incomprehension among his contemporaries. It is said that Beethoven would have replied to his critics that they had not been written for them but for a future era.

Movements:

00 Allegro

11:30 Allegretto vivace

20:28 Adagio molto e mesto

33:14 Allegro (The Russian theme, atacca without pause)

The performance is by a remarkable String Quartet consisting of young students from the New England Conservatory, in Boston.