Close-up Concertgebouw Orchestra: Beethoven's torchbearers

Beethoven, Brahms and Strauss

After Beethoven’s death 200 years ago, other composers took up his torch. This programme features late works by three of them. Brahms had already retired when he discovered the clarinet and wrote the autumnal Clarinet Quintet. Ernst von Dohnányi’s Sextet is a late addition to an impressive chamber music œuvre, while Richard Strauss’s Andante was not published until twenty-five years after his death in 1973. All three helped keep Beethoven’s work alive and relevant – Brahms as a composer, Dohnányi as a pianist and Strauss as a conductor. Also on the programme is a late work by Beethoven himself: the ‘Grosse Fuge’, originally scored as the final movement of his String Quartet No. 13 and the crowning achievement of his œuvre.

Close-up

Musicians of the Concertgebouw Orchestra perform their own programmes in the Recital Hall as part of the Close-up chamber music series. Each of these concerts is unique and performed only once as part of the series. It’s the very best way to experience the individual qualities of the orchestral musicians! These intimate concerts are organised by the Friends of the Concertgebouw and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.