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The Beethoven string quartet cycle stands as one of the most inspired and unprecedented bodies of work in classical music. This year, CMS celebrates their immeasurable legacy with a season built around the periods of Beethoven’s career: early, middle, and late. Through these 16 pieces—performed this season by the Calidore String Quartet—Beethoven not only told his life story, but reimagined Western music by drawing from the past and gesturing toward its future.

The composer’s early set of six quartets—Op. 18—began a thrilling new chapter in the history of the string quartet, building on the legacy of his mentor Haydn. Beethoven’s middle period found him pushing into even more thematically rich territory with the three virtuosic Op. 59 “Razumovsky” quartets. The season concludes with the historic late quartets: timeless monoliths that adopt an evocative, devastating, and transcendent musical language unlike anything previously heard in music.

Throughout the season, the quartet concerts will take place alongside programs featuring other seminal chamber works by the composer. These concerts will include pieces by Romantic and 20th-century luminaries whose career trajectories and compositional approach bear similarities to Beethoven’s, including Brahms, Bruckner, Elgar, Bartók, and Corigliano.