Elias String Quartet

String Quartet in A major Op. 18 No. 5
String Quartet in C major Op. 59 No. 3, ‘Rasumovsky’
String Quartet in C sharp minor Op. 131

The last of the Elias Quartet’s trio of concerts exploring and celebrating Beethoven’s string quartets culminates in the Op. 131 quartet, Beethoven’s personal favourite of his late quartets. Schumann, himself a master of the form, admired the late quartets for ‘...the grandeur of which no words can express. They seem to me to stand... on the extreme boundary of all that has hitherto been attained by human art and imagination.’

Before that, the Op. 18 quartet looks back to Mozart while the Op. 59, composed for the Russian ambassador to Vienna, Prince Rasumovsky, has a Russian tinge.