Middle String Quartets

Producers note:

The collaboration with the Narratio Quartet in this monumental undertaking is a true joy. Johannes Leertouwer and Viola de Hoog are old and dear musician friends from over 30 years back, when we already made many recordings together. Albums with their Schönbrunn Ensemble and Anima Eterna Brugge, with all the Mozart piano concerto's, his Flute Quartet and Schubert symphonies are amongst those. 

We lost site a bit over the years, but re-uniting with them is a wonderful and inspiring experience. There was always talk of working together again, but now in the autumn of our lives we enjoy it to the full with the most amazing music ever written.

It is a challenge, the period instruments, the unbelievable complex repertoire and the amount of quartets is simply staggering. It asks all of our skill and talents to make it work optimally. The results are however as good as it gets and I am very proud of it and thank the Narratio Quartet for offering me their trust and friendship to artistically produce, engineer and release these treasures on The Spirit of Turtle.

2024 Bert van der Wolf-Oude Avenhuis

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About the Album

Beethoven’s string quartets were written in an era when chamber music was shifting from the salons of the nobility into the concert hall, and when chamber music ensembles were slowly but surely metamorphosing from being a pursuit for a mix of outstanding amateurs and professionals into a discipline for professionally trained musicians. In that sense the “Rasumowsky” quartets represent a turning point in the string quartet tradition. Count Rasumowsky, one of Beethoven’s principal patrons in the first decade of the nineteenth century and the Russian ambassador in Vienna, was also an excellent amateur violinist, playing second violin in the string quartet which he financed and which was led by the renowned Ignaz Schuppanzigh. The three quartets, Opus 59, which were dedicated to him, prompted him to give up his place in the quartet. He provided the members of this quartet with a fixed appointment in 1808, which even included a pension for life. Initially, the three Opus 59 quartets met with some resistance from the Viennese audiences. After the two opus numbers 18 and 59, both consisting of a group of quartets, opus 74 is a single work, generally considered as one of the most readily accessible.

Viola de Hoog: I have often wondered which of the “great spirits” might provide a new impulse and a different direction for what we call classical music in this early part of the twenty-first century. Narratio Quartet have been immersed in all of Beethoven’s string quartets for over fifteen years now. We experience time and again how Beethoven explored and then overcame the limits of the Classical style and the instrumental difficulties that were prevalent at the start of the nineteenth century. What we hear has been enriched by the passing of two centuries and the gaining of wider experience. Progress indeed, might be your first thought, but perhaps we have also lost something along the way? The ability to feel how groundbreaking and visionary this music was in those days. My colleagues and I feel that using instruments that are comparable to those of the time has helped us enormously in getting somewhat closer to the surprise, the bewilderment and the rapture that the musicians in Schuppanzigh’s quartet must have felt when they first came face to face with the newest and most innovative chamber music of the day.

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