In this, the opening concert of the 13th Istanbul International Opus Amadeus Chamber Music Festival, put on by ‘Artisan Organizasyon’, the excellent Borusan String Quartet – consisting of Esen Kıvrak and Nilay Sancar (violins), Efdal Altun (viola) and Poyraz Baltacıgil (cello) – will perform Beethoven’s String Quartet No 12 in E flat major, Opus 127, and either Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No 2 in A minor, Opus 13, or his String Quartet No 4 in E minor, Opus 44 (the Opus Amadeus and Biletinial websites both list this work as his ‘String Quartet No 2 in E minor, Opus 44’, a mish-mash of the aforementioned two works). Notwithstanding the confusion over the billing of the Mendelssohn quartet, this concert is highly recommended.
Beethoven’s four-movement String Quartet No 12 in E flat major, written in 1825 to a commission from the wealthy Russian prince Nicolas Galitzin, an amateur cellist, was the first of his late quartets. It was this commission that brought Beethoven back to composing string quartets after a ten-year hiatus. Its extremely long second movement, a series of lyrical variations on a simple theme, is typical of late Beethoven in that it ignores the conventions of its time. Kai Christiansen, writing on the ‘Earsense’ website, says of this movement that it ‘places us squarely in the astonishing realm of late Beethoven with an epic set of variations on a very simple but exquisitely beautiful theme. These are not Beethoven’s typical variations full of brio, virtuosity and shocking contrasts. Instead, Beethoven offers a rhapsodic slow movement in which sustained lyricism spans great arcs of loosely braided contrapuntal textures in what is ultimately an extended and passionately emotional song.’
