The Beethoven cycle
Sixteen quartets, three years, one church in Norfolk with a heating system we have learned to work around.
Why record them at all
There is no shortage of Beethoven cycles, and we thought hard about adding another. What decided us was the Op. 18 weekend at Fenmere: playing all six in three days changed how we heard them, and we wanted the recordings to carry that — quartets that know what comes next, rather than six separate sessions.
Where we are
Volume one — Nos. 1 to 3 — came out last autumn. Volume two is recorded and appears in the spring. The middle quartets follow next winter, and the late quartets close the cycle.
We are playing the whole cycle live across the same three years, which is why the same opus numbers keep reappearing in the schedule.
“They play Op. 18 as if the ink were still wet.”
The Chamber Music Review