The other Razumovskys
Why BeethovenEvery chamber music lover knows that Beethoven wrote a set of three string quartets in 1806 for Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador in Vienna.
Razumovsky employed a house quartet, led by Beethoven’s friend Ignaz Schuppanzigh (see my book Why Beethoven for more).
But Beethoven was not the only composer to accept a Razumovsky commission.
There was a violist called Franz Weiss (1784-1830) who composed a pair of quartets. Nobody’s ever heard of them. Now Canada’s Eybler Quartet have recorded them. Out next month.
Thanks! Quite interesting. I am a big fan of the more famous Weiss, Silvius Leopold. Maybe this Weiss is just as food? 🙂
Three works by Weiss are available on IMSLP — two quartets and some variations for violin and orchestra. So it is not literally the case that “nobody” has ever heard or heard of them — but rare, to be sure.
Not only heard of them, played them. Unfortunately, a comment made long ago by Heifetz applies: “I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.”
I love this quote!
And that came from the person who premiered the Korngold concerto
Good to know that a recording of the Eybler Quartet’s performances of Weiss’s Op. 8 will be out soon. Slippedisc readers might like to read (in addition to Norman’s book on Beethoven) “The Other ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets: Franz Weiss’s Op. 8 and the Formation of Vienna’s Kennerpublikum,” by the music historian Mark Ferraguto, published in “String Quartets in Beethoven’s Europe,” edited by Nancy November (2022). Ferraguto recently made the first modern edition of Weiss’s “Razumovsky” Quartets (A-R Editions, 2023), which the Eybler Quartet used in its performances.
More footnote fodder: When Schuppanzigh organized a series of string quartet performances upon returning to Vienna from Russia in 1823, Weiss was the violist. As such, he was the composer whose quartets (D major, C minor, G minor) were performed alongside those of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Weiss wrote other works; in 1806, a critic compared his “mythological ballet” Amphion to Beethoven’s Creatures of Prometheus.
There’s a goldmine of 19th Century music waiting to be revived.
Maybe not solid gold, but worth hearing again.