Busch Quartet
Beethoven's three quartets Op.59 have become inseparably linked with the name of Count Andreas Kirillovich Razumovsky, who commissioned them. He was the Russian ambassador in Vienna, as well as one of the city's foremost musical patrons. From 1808 until 1814, when his palace burned down, he employed a permanent string quartet led by the well known violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, and he was himself a competent enough violinist to take his place in the ensemble from time to time.
Beethoven composed his Razumovsky Quartets in what for was for him an unusually short space of time, from April to November 1806. Of the three, only this C major work found favour with Beethoven's contemporaries - perhaps because, unlike its companions, it clearly glances back towards the music of the past. Its Classical propensities even extend to the inclusion of an old-fashioned minuet in place of a scherzo. Beethoven had, moreover, sketched out the minuet several years earlier; and his use of pre-existing material is one pointer towards the probability that the entire quartet was put together in some haste.
Early listeners to the work may well have detected Mozartian undertones in its outer movements, and in particular its finale, whose fusion of sonata form and brilliant fugal writing echoes the concluding Allegro of the first in Mozart's series of six 'Haydn' Quartets, K.387. (Mozart took up the idea again in the famous contrapuntal finale of his Jupiter Symphony.). Beethoven's finale is perfectly judged: it crowns a work that had begun hesitantly, and as though in a void, with a triumphant affirmation of faith. Perhaps it's not by chance that among the composer's sketches for the finale is to be found the comment, "Make no secret of your deafness, not even in art."
When Beethoven accepted the commission from Count Razumovsky, he apparently promised to include a Russian folk tune in each quartet. In the case of the first two works of the triptych that tune is clearly identifiable, but not so in this C major work. Perhaps the second movement, with its melancholy main theme, and its highly original use of cello pizzicato, represents Beethoven's attempt to evoke a Slavic character.
©Misha Donat
