Shadow and Light – Beethoven 250
Chiaroscuro Quartet

Chamber Music

Thursday, 21 July 2022
7.30 pm, Lauenen Church

For their final concert as Menuhin's Heritage Artists, violinist Alina Ibragimova and her colleagues of the Chiaroscuso Quartet have chosen three masterpieces of Viennese Classicism. The highlight of the evening is the third quartet of Beethoven's “Razumovsky trilogy”, named after the Russian count who commissioned it. The Tsar's ambassador to the Habsburgs and a great music lover, Andrei Razumowsky was one of the first – along with his brother-in-law, the Prince of Lobkowitz, who was also a dedicatee of a series of quartets (Op. 18) – to support Beethoven when he moved to Vienna. Full of contrasts, the work heralds the brilliance of Romanticism, moving swiftly from darkness (in the first movement's introduction, which borders on atonality) to vibrant light (especially in the dazzling finale).