Michael Parloff: Lecture on Beethoven Quartets: Op. 18, Nos. 4, 5, & 6

Michael Parloff provides insight into the music and background of Beethoven’s String Quartets: Op 18, No. 4 (C minor), No. 5 (A major), and No. 6 (B-flat major).
Filmed live in the Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio on February 2, 2016. Video produced by Trent Casey.
Chapters:
Quartet in A major, Op. 18, No. 5: 5:48
Quartet in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4: 21:27
Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 18, No. 6: 33:14
CMS is grateful to The Emerson String Quartet for the use of excerpts from their Deutsche Grammophon recording of the Beethoven String Quartets.
For additional information about the Beethoven String Quartets, the following resources are highly recommended:
Joseph Kerman: The Beethoven Quartets
William Kinderman: The String Quartets of Beethoven
Lewis Lockwood: Beethoven
Kurt Oppens: Kurt Oppens on Music
J. S. Shedlock, translator: Beethoven’s Letters
Maynard Solomon: Beethoven
Jan Swafford: Beethoven, Anguish and Triumph
Angus Watson: Beethoven’s Chamber Music in Context
Robert Winter (essays by Michael Steinberg): The Beethoven Quartet Companion

[@poplife123]

wow these are amazing lectures .....can't get enough

[@BillDeef]

This is excellent. It actually made me like even more pieces i thought I'd already loved for almost a half century. And here is the sad part: not even 300 views yet.

[@jorgebarros664]

Thanks for the excellent lecture

[@the_eternal_student]

I do not like some of the non-musical comparisons in the first lecture, but I see that you are interested in drama or theater, and the references here were not as bad, but even in the first lecture, I enjoyed the musical analysis and excerpts.

[@walexwetchina487]

do mozart next!

[@anthonywritesfantasy]

"...And we open the door..."
Beethoven in a nutshell.

[@randyfisher6509]

I always enjoy Michael’s research, but OMG, how does he find such uninteresting players for his examples? I guess it makes the analysis the more important, with so little musical expression to be found. I’m guessing, in the day, it was the other way around: there was more musical expression so the intellectual twists and turns of composition were less essential to the enjoyment. Fast and straight, the 20th century metronomic style imitates the uniform dress code livery of a time when players were probably more individually expressive, in spite of the costume. Isn’t that why Mozart abandoned provincial Salzburg for the players of Vienna? Bobby Mann said in retirement: “I can’t believe how fast our early [Juilliard SQ] recordings were. It’s so nice getting older and having more time to explore the music!”