When we are dealing with a personality of Beethoven's stature, the discovery of new works goes beyond the interest of mere exhumation and can constitute a genuine event or enable us to penetrate the secrets of the composer's laboratory. This is the case with the five short individual pieces for string quartet or quintet which appear on this CD; they accompany two scores that are better known but still deserve a higher profile, the Quintet Op.29 (a materpiece) an the Quartet in F major Hess 34.
February 2012
****
“Beethoven's spacious Op. 29 Quintet is too rarely heard; his fascinating quartet rewrite of the Op. 14 No. 1 Sonata, and the fugal fill-ups are virtually unknown.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.