Beethoven: String Quartets, Vol.1

In his sixteen string quartets, thefirst set of six published in 1801 and the last, completed in 1826 and published in theyear of the composer's death, Beethoven was as innovative as ever, developing andextending a form that seemed to have already reached a height of perfection in the laterwork of Haydn and of Mozart. The earliest mention of a string quartet comes in therecorded request of Count Apponyi in 1795. This had no immediate result, but it seemsprobable that Beethoven in these years was influenced by Emanuel Aloys Forster, amusician 22 years his senior, whose proficiency as a teacher of counterpoint he admiredand recommended to others, while himself perhaps profiting from the example of Forster'sown quartets. The first group of string quartets by Beethoven, published as Opus 18, consisted of quartets written between 1798and 1800 and was dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz. The third of these, in D major, was the first in order of composition,followed by what was issued as Opus 18, No.1,the Quartet in F major. This last wascompleted in its original version by 25th June 1799, the date of an inscription by thecomposer on the first violin part, addressed to his close friend Karl Amenda, who hadtaken up residence in Vienna in 1798, serving first Prince Lobkowitz and then asmusic-teacher in the Mozart family. The friendship of Beethoven and Amenda had started ata quartet evening in a friend's house, when the composer turned the pages for Amenda,playing first violin. In 1799 Amenda was obliged to return home to Courland after thedeath of his brother. Beethoven's note to his friend reads: Accept this quartet as a smalltoken of our friendship. Whenever you play it to yourself, remember the days we have spenttogether and at the same time the sincere affection I felt and will always feel for you,your warm-hearted and true friend. In a letter to Amenda of 1st July 1801 he warns him notto lend the quartet to anyone, since he has made various changes in it.

The members of the Kodaly Quartet were trained at the Budapest Ferenc Liszt Academy, and three of them, the second violin Tamas Szabo, viola-player Gabor Fias and cellist Janos Devich, were formerly in the Sebestyen Quartet, which was awarded the jury's special diploma at the 1966 GenevaInternational Quartet Competition and won first prize at the 1968 Leo Weiner Quartet Competition in Budapest. Since 1970, with the violinist Attila Falvay, the quartet has been known as the Kodaly Quartet, a title adopted with the approval of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Education. The Kodaly Quartet has given concerts throughout Europe, in the Soviet Union and in Japan, in addition to regular appearances in Hungary both in the concert hall and on television and has made for Naxos highly acclaimed recordings of string quartets by Ravel, Debussy, Haydn and Schubert.