These words which Beethoven noted as advice for himself in his diary (Tagebuch) might well be applied to the interpretation presented here by the Quatuor Ysaÿe, taken as a unified entity, a ‘blessed’ collective. For if the four musicians are capable of following a thousand routes through this garden of paths that diverge as Beethoven gradually erects it into an ineffable monument, they can also breathe as one, visibly offering the mystery of a unity never achieved in any other instrumental combination. Yet that unity never becomes uniformity. 33 QUATUOR YSAŸE
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