August 21, 2020 - Virtual Concert Series Newsletter

Last week’s virtual concert, titled The Beethoven Experience V, consisted of the early quartet, Op. 18, No. 3, and the middle period quartet, Op. 59. No. 3, the third of the Razumovsky quartets. This week’s virtual concert, The Beethoven Experience VI, is devoted to just one work, Beethoven’s late quartet Op. 131 played by the Borromeo String Quartet with an introduction by Nicolas Kitchen. Beethoven was especially fond of Op. 131. In a letter to a friend, he wrote that he had found “a new way of part-writing and, thank God, has less lack of imagination than before.” When Schubert heard Op. 131 performed, he said, ”After this, what is there left for us to write?”