Celebrating their 25th year together, the Vertavo String Quartet now releases its very first Beethoven recording. The works on this new hybrid SACD, the String Quartet Opus 130 and the Grosse Fugue, have been part of the Vertavo repertoire as long as the group has been in existence, and the insight that this brings is clearly evident in these memorable performances.

Formed in 1984, the Vertavo String Quartet is now established as one of the leading European string quartets, and since then they have collaborated with artists like Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Paul Lewis, and Leif Ove Andsnes. Among the many contemporary composers they have worked with are Ligeti, Adès, Widmann, Nørgård, Edlund and Asheim. The group have received a number of international awards for their recordings which so far have featured amongst others the music by Bartók (the complete quartets), Schumann, Brahms, Nielsen, Debussy, and Grieg.

The six-movement String Quartet Op. 130 was written between August and November 1825 during a rare period of relatively good health in the composer’s later years. Beethoven’s original idea was to have the Grosse Fugue as the finale of the Op. 130. Only after the Quartet was completed and premiered did he listen to the urgings of friends and issue the fugue as a separate composition. He then wrote a new and more light-hearted finale for the Op. 130 Quartet, a movement which turned out to be his very last composition.