When the Italian violinist Felix Radicati found the quartets incomprehensible, Beethoven allegedly retorted: 'Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age.'
Instruments
The violin played by Alina Ibragimova is an Andrea Amati from 1570, loaned by the Jumpstart Jr Foundation.
Critical Reception
Unlike Beethoven's Op. 18 quartets, the 'Razumovsky' Quartets only gained wider appreciation with the rise of professional string quartets and public chamber concerts in the 1820s.
Interpretation
The Chiaroscuro Quartet, founded in 2005, strives for a sound expressing every nuance between tenderness and aggression, using gut strings and original bows.
Composition History
Razumovsky's commission for three quartets included the specific request for 'Russian melodies, real or imitated'.
Critical Reception
Early listeners were baffled by the unprecedented scale and rhetorical force of the 'Razumovsky' Quartets, with critics calling them 'crazy music' and 'the botched work of a madman'.
Composition History
The 'Razumovsky' Quartets were commissioned by Count Andrey Kyrillovich Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna and an amateur violinist, who maintained a house quartet.
