Journey toward the Innermost
Beethoven’s 250-year anniversary is the central focus of my repertoire for 2020. In addition to the romances, the Violin and the Triple Concerto as well as the performance of the ten sonatas all over the world, his piano and string trios have accompanied and inspired me for decades. With the elegiac String Quartet in E-flat-major Op. 74 (the “Harp Quartet”), one of the dreams of my youth comes true, as I finally engage with the cycle of Beethoven’s late chamber music works.
After all, the violin sonata cycle of this great master is a journey, beginning with Op. 12 and leading towards the “Kreutzer Sonata” Op. 47 and finally the introvert Sonata in G-major Op. 96.
In the case of the String Quartets, however, we accompany Beethoven to the very end of his life. His Quartet No. 16 in F-major Op. 135 was written at the same time as his sketches for a Tenth Symphony. I now begin my journey towards the innermost with his Harp Quartet. May my wonderful colleagues and I one day manage to complete this musical expedition.
Jörg Widmann takes up this musical thread in his composition Studie über Beethoven, which I have commissioned, showing us a path into a new quartet orbit.
Anne-Sophie Mutter, September 2019