String Quartet No. 12 in E‑Flat Major

With this quartet, his long-delayed return to the medium after a break of more than 10 years, Beethoven changed gears as a composer. Although its four movements, with fast-paced outer ones embracing a slow second and "Scherzo" third, might look conventional, what they contain is new and radical: a profoundly elemental kind of writing that defines Beethoven’s so-called late quartets, of which this starts the sequence. Written in 1825, when the composer was completely deaf and isolated in the sound world of his own mind, the piece features sudden changes of mood, meter and rhythm—sometimes facilitated by trills like the one that sweeps the first movement’s opening chorale into a far less solemn geniality—that struck early audiences as bizarre and unfathomable. As did the way Beethoven shifts around the score contrasting blocks of sound, creating sculpted contrasts that aren’t always easy on the ear. But the entrancing beauty of the long, slow second movement (a theme and variations), the exhilaration of the “Scherzando vivace” and the magical transition of the “Finale” from a false ending into an exquisite coda are all things that elevate this music from mere eccentricity to genius.