Quatuor Ébène

Chamber music live is something truly special. Seeing the musicians exchange glances, sensing their breathing and hearing the movement of fingers across the instruments creates an intense and intimate musical experience. We share this with the French Quatuor Ébène, returning to Konserthuset Stockholm with a programme devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven. When the quartet celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2019/20, it recorded the complete Beethoven quartets.

Beethoven’s string quartets form a unique musical universe. Here, we enter the first of his three Razumovsky Quartets, commissioned by the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Andrey Razumovsky. The bold music has almost symphonic proportions, and in the slow movement a Russian folk melody emerges – a request from Razumovsky himself.

After the interval, we encounter the late, uncompromising Beethoven, as he in his Thirteenth Quartet breaks through all formal boundaries. We also hear the quartet in its original version, with the monumental Grosse Fuge as the finale. Long regarded as difficult and enigmatic, the Great Fugue is now considered one of the most fascinating movements in the quartet repertoire.