Peep Show From No. 1 2003 in Pdf

Beethoven's second set of quartets, Opus 59, inhabit a very different universe from that of his first set, Opus 18. Although only six years had passed since the publication of the Opus 18 quartets, Beethoven's style changed immensely. The Opus 59 quartets were composed in the wake of the "Eroica" Symphony, and the vastness of the individual movements; the symphonic, orchestral character of the string writing; and the stretched formal boundaries led some critics to dub the first of the set an "Eroica" for string quartet.

Schumann's F-sharp Minor Sonata is a hard nut to crack, but the young Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes does better than most. He pounces upon the quirky rhythmic ambiguities, clarifying and varying knotty textures with felicitous voicings. His detailing, however, never becomes fussy or discontiguous. The thickest chords resonate more tellingly than in the streamlined Pollini and Perahia recordings. Andsnes plunges into the Fantasy's murky waters, savoring but never dwindling over every harmonic and contrapuntal nicety.