Let’s try Beethoven 6 times as slow with lots of reverb

Just when you think you’ve heard it all…

Slow Beethoven, set for release April 28 via Round Sound, is a dramatic reworking of a movement from one of Beethoven’s late string quartets, sonically transformed in a huge empty water tank in the high desert of northwestern Colorado. Performed by a string quartet led by renowned cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, Music Director of the National Sawdust Ensemble, the work is the creation of The TANK Center for Sonic Arts, a nonprofit recording studio and concert venue dedicated to the Tank.

On Slow Beethoven, the Zeigler-led quartet performs the fugue movement from Beethoven’s “String Quartet #14 in C-sharp minor,” Opus 131, at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. Relayed into the Tank in Colorado and back into the headphones of the performers, the sounds of their performance resonate in the Tank’s sonic environment, a deep, swirling reverb that sustains sounds up to 40 seconds. The extremely resonant space requires the quartet to slow the piece drastically so that the movement, usually some seven minutes long, becomes a totally unique 44-minute work….

They sent me a link. I listened.

It’s pretty much what I’d expected, except when it’s worse.

Life’s too short for slowed-down anyone, let alone the greatest composer that ever lived.