‘Donkeys they are!’ shouted Beethoven. He had just learned that the premiere audience had had two short movements from his Thirteenth String Quartet repeated, and not the concluding Grosse Fuge. Yet the listeners were not entirely wrong: with this piece, Beethoven was ahead of his time. A deeper understanding emerged only at the time when Stravinsky noted: ‘The Grosse Fuge is a contemporary piece and will always remain contemporary.’ The work is now part of the absolute canon of the string quartet repertoire and will today be played by the Spanish Cuarteto Casals.

A guide to life, this is how many musicians see Beethoven’s late string quartets. This music is so incomprehensibly good that, as a player, you can hardly get a grip on it. You keep trying, the road to performance is as important as the sounding result. Beethoven captures the essence of existence in these monumental works. At the peak of his powers, he produced wonders of the world.