Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet in B-flat, op. 130 & Große Fuge in B-flat, op. 133
Two geniuses who pushed beyond their own compositional boundaries: under the motto Radical Strings, the Beija-Flor String Quartet explores two daring, highly ambitious masterpieces of the Viennese Classical tradition.
While Mozart’s E-flat major string quartet is marked by radical chromaticism and was, according to contemporary criticism, considered harmonically rather “boldly seasoned,” the final movement of Beethoven’s Op. 130—the Große Fuge—provoked outright outrage at its premiere. Beethoven subsequently felt compelled to compose a new finale and later published the fugue separately as Op. 133.
