Sincere people.

[Enrique]

I'd like to know how many of you love and cherish B's last piano sonatas and string quartets. On my part, I can say I do not understand any of them. Of course, this is a question for sincere people which, I think, you all are.

[Enrique]

And thanks to you, Preston, for being true to your opinons. Yes, I was just listening to Beethove's string quartet #14, 1st mov, and I said to myself: that's boring. But I realize I ought to do a serious effort not to miss something that time has proved to be valuable.

Above all, classical music is not sacral but, please do take notice, is not pomp either. So, I do not see the point in trying to take away the pompous out of it, on the part of those people dedicated to its diffusion.

I remember when Vivaldi was unburied by musicologists. Not matter what the actress was, she would invariably answer "My favorite composer is him". Which is F102? Maybe the wheat field, with the seagulls above?

[Chris]

I do quite love the last piano sonatas, especially Op. 111 (and Op. 106, if you are counting that as one of his last). The string quartets perhaps less so, but the Grosse Fuge is definitely one of my favorite pieces.

[Preston]

it is my avatar - it a still life

[Enrique]

I do quite love the last piano sonatas, especially Op. 111 (and Op. 106, if you are counting that as one of his last). The string quartets perhaps less so, but the Grosse Fuge is definitely one of my favorite pieces.

Op. 111 I've heard it many a time and must say I envy you. Op. 106 is the Hammerklavier, I guess. I've recently bought the 32 by Backhaus, and don't regret it.

[Peter]

I'd like to know how many of you love and cherish B's last piano sonatas and string quartets. On my part, I can say I do not understand any of them. Of course, this is a question for sincere people which, I think, you all are.

When I first seriously became interested in CM in my early teens, the late Beethoven works were unapproachable to me and I really didn't like the late quartets at all. However now in middle age they are my favourite Beethoven works and I have far greater difficulty enjoying the first period works that formerly meant so much. So I think repeated listening and perseverance are the keys to these treasures - you can't force it, just be patient.

[Michael]

I started with middle period Beethoven and moved on to late period after a couple of years. I turned up my nose at early Beethoven for a few more years - until I got sense and realised what amazing music he was turning out, even in the Bonn years.

Regarding the early works, the composer and Beethoven expert, Robert Simpson, put it very well when he wrote:

"We cannot get out of Opus 18 what Beethoven put into it if we listen with the same ears we use for the Grosse Fuge or even for the Razumovsky Quartets. And it is what the composer put into each work that is what we should try and find, rather than damaging the concentration of our perception by telling ourselves what it was that he was not yet able to say."

[Enrique]

Thanks for your post. I can enjoy the second period quartets and that's a non plus ultra for me... for the moment. I was once listening a work I had hundreds of times heard before, but the music came along all anew. It was the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. So, if only I knew a couple of excellent ensembles playing those quartets, I know I'd begin to like them.