(E) One of my favorite summer music events has just started today: the twenty-first season of Music@Menlo from July 14th to August 5th. As it is always the case, the festival will offer besides live concerts performed by well-known professional musicians, lectures and discussion events, master classes, and prelude performances performed by the young artists of the Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute.

This year, the theme of the festival is Ludvig Beethoven’s quartets and his contribution to the world of Chamber Music. Here is what the Artistic Directors, David Finckel and Wu Han, wrote about Beethoven’s journey in his composition of his sixteen quartets:

“For many, Beethoven’s string quartets have become an essential experience to be repeated at regular intervals. One might ask: why? There are many reasons, both emotional and intellectual. In terms of the human spirit, one cannot find a body of music that is comparable: during a chronological performance of the cycle, we accompany Beethoven on his turbulent personal journey, from the brilliant start of his early career to his deeply introspective late period, when he composed for himself and for the future. On the technical side, the cycle begins with six quartets as skilled and polished as those of Haydn and Mozart, and we listen in wonder at how Beethoven went on to reinvent the genre, creating quartets of unimagined breadth, depth, and complexity.

A more meaningful answer to the question lies somewhere in the essence of the Beethoven experience. From the most brilliant musicians we have known, many of them our own mentors, we have gathered nuggets of wisdom and insight that have informed our understanding of Beethoven. We have come to learn that his music, though deeply personal, is not about him—aside from a handful of works (such as the Pastoral Symphony), his compositions are not referential or pictorial. Nor are his works concerned with the musical fashions and trends of his time. Although he hoped to please his listeners, his priority was composing the best music he could, come what may in terms of popularity. When we sense the absence of any superfluous agenda, yet find ourselves in the throes of a profound musical experience, we must look deeper to ask: what in my own life resonates with this?

It is not easily explained, but here is one human trait that many have in common: perhaps divided equally, some of us simply must return again and again either to the ocean or to the mountains. For us, the pull of Beethoven is just as universal, powerful, and inexplicable. Are we returning to where we came from, or ascending toward the next life? That is for each of us to decide.”

Note: The picture above is the Prelude Performance from July 14th, 2023.

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