Angela Bae, Violin | Justin DeFilippis, Violin | Benjamin Zannoni, Viola | Russell Houston, Cello

Beethoven String Quartet No. 13 in Bb Major, Op. 130, with Grosse Fuge Op. 133

Six movements contrasted by their extraordinary length and extreme brevity.
Innovative in structure, voice leading, dynamic indications, rhythms and dissonance.
Beethoven’s struggles: deafness, illness, personal life.
Overall mood is upbeat, a profound expression of life’s joy; it pushes musical boundaries into the future.
The Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue) is the colossus Finale that Stravinsky termed “a perfect miracle…contemporary forever”

1st Movement: Lyrical introduction followed by a movement with recurring interruptions that alternate between triumphant and reflective.
2nd Movement: Presto, under 2 minutes. Playful, teasing, rustic.
3rd Movement: Good-natured dance swing. Complex dynamics indicated on virtually every beat.
4th Movement: Simple German country dance becomes highly embellished by virtuosic violin passage work. Movement ends with a charming, playful statement of the theme, fragmented among the four instruments and in retrograde.
5th Movement: Cavatina. Included in the Voyager Golden Record space launch of 1977 as an example of one of humankind’s deepest musical experiences. The middle section Beklemmt (inner suffering) is one of the great miracles of music, an instrumental approximation of sobbing, gasping.
6th Movement: Grosse Fuga (Great Fugue). Its complexity and dissonance were too extreme for listeners of 1826, and Beethoven was asked to replace it with an alternative movement. Introduction presents the fugue theme in all the permutations that are to follow. Massive double fugue nearly 20 minutes in length.