C OLORADO Q UARTET RECORDINGS Cowell | Schubert | Brahms | Contemporary BEETHOVEN Middle Quartets Op. 59, no. 1-3, "Rasumovsky" Op. 74, "Harp" Parnassus Records - PACD 96034/5 (2-disc set) Recorded in 2001, State University of NY at Purchase Released January 2003 Our Great Reviews Gramophone Magazine American Record Guide This recording commemorates the 20-year anniversary of the Colorado Quartet's 1983 victories at the Naumburg Chamber Music and Banff International String Quartet Competitions. It is unique in many ways, not the least being that ALL repeats are taken in these pieces - a rare format for recordings of these works. The Colorado Quartet plans to continue to record Beethoven Quartets over the next few years, with the hope of releasing the complete set by 2008, in honor of their 25th anniversary. An interview with the Colorado Quartet What special interest do these particular quartets have for you? Julie: They're all so incredible. Of the four quartets on these CDs, we start with Op. 59#1, which was such a ground-breaker. It's the very first quartet that has no exposition repeat in the first movement. It's the first quartet that attempts to have orchestral sonority - Beethoven is breaking the bounds of what the quartet can actually play. He's changing ideas of structure with the enormous development sections of the first movement and also the second, which is a Scherzo. The third movement is incredibly sad music that supposedly depicts a weeping willow tree over his brother's grave, although his brother wasn't dead yet. Then there's the last movement with the Russian theme for Count Rasumovsky. With this massive piece, almost 45 minutes long, he's announcing that he is starting a new way of writing for the string quartet. It's an amazing achievement. Debbie: One of the reasons these pieces mean so much to us is the fact that from the very first of Beethoven's quartet to the last there's such a huge development of his writing and of music history. We can play those fifteen quartets and see almost the entire range of Western music. If we played no other quartets, we could almost be satisfied with just the Beethoven Quartets. The three Rasumovsky Quartets are all very popular and are constantly played by every string quartet that thinks they can handle them. How about Op. 74? Diane: The first movement of Op. 74 has some of the most exciting stuff that Beethoven wrote. The Scherzo in c minor, harking back to the Fifth Symphony, is very exciting. The slow movement is really gorgeous - a little mellow. But the Op. 59s in general are more virtuosic for the whole quartet. Debbie:The tune of the variations of the last movement of Op. 74 is very simple, like a classical set of variations, except it's weird. That's Beethoven's little joke. It's not exactly Haydn - it's totally new. So many quartets before you have recorded these quartets. What do you do to make your performances different, special? Julie:One of the differences is something we talk, argue, think about to a great extent. We decided to take every single one of the repeats. The other things that is slightly controversial concerns Beethoven's metronome markings. Was Beethoven's metronome accurate? Did he really mean what he wrote? Some of them are 'too fast' and some are 'too slow,' but you can't have it both ways. We struggled with this quite a bit and came to a meeting of the minds about how the metronome markings help us understand the character of each movement. Were there any surprises during the sessions? Marka: There were tempo surprises. There were things that we were absolutely sure of - we had been monitoring ourselves with Beethoven's tempo markings. But we had gotten really drawn out in some of the slow movements and really fast in some of the fast movements. When we were called upon to match tempos in other sessions it was really difficult. But it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. In doing alternative tempi we found a different kind of expressivity. We had to cleanse our palates.