17. Late Great Show

The famous maestoso chords that open the E flat quartet shout out, loud and clear, that Beethoven was on the verge of creating a new world. This quartet is the first of the five late quartets he wrote in his last three years and they will all feature during this year’s Festival. The E flat Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo is renowned for being the mostly sensuously beautiful movement Beethoven ever wrote. The form is simple, a set of six variations on a rapt and expressive melody, but what is heart-stopping is the way Beethoven uses changes in rhythm and tempo to dislocate our sense of time so that by the third variation we find ourselves in a world where time no longer exists.

All works performed by Pacifica Quartet