Beethoven: Piano Quartet, String Quintet, Eyeglass Duo

The Nash Ensemble continues their critically acclaimed survey of Beethoven's rarer chamber music in an intriguing new disc. Beethoven's String Quintet of Opus 104 is an arrangement of his revolutionary third piano trio. The music is profoundly Beethovenian in its abrupt, extreme contrasts, violent rhetoric alternating with intense pathos and yearning lyricism. The Piano Quartet in E flat major is an arrangement of his quintet for piano and winds and owes a debt to Mozart in general and his piano and wind quintet in particular. The disc is completed by a delightful miniature, the Eyeglass Duo for Viola and Cello