Op.95, written in 1810, is the last of this series of ‘middle quartets’ and the shortest of Beethoven’s great quartets. Conceived at a particularly troubled period (his deafness reaching an advanced stage, the failure of a marriage project, the death of his two principal patrons), this work is a perfect example of the role he conferred on music, and of his faith in its power to overcome all the blows of fate through the concentration of a telluric willpower. The third and penultimate movement, Allegro assai vivace ma serioso, heralds the wild innovations and the cosmic leap that Beethoven was to accomplish in his late quartets, on his return to a genre which he abandoned for fourteen years after composing this eleventh quartet. 47 QUATUOR YSAŸE
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTAwOTQx