 Ce sont trois œuvres un peu courtes (pas seulement dans la durée, pardon jeune maître de quinze ans !), et seulement en trois mouvements. Dans cette formation de chambre particulière, on ne voit guère antérieurement que Mozart, mais contrairement à l'affirmation du présent livret, il n'est pas dit que Beethoven en ait déjà su quelque chose, malgré là quelques traces mozartiennes (car surtout de telle sonate pour violon et piano). Il est plus approprié d'y repérer l'amorce réelle de l'idiosyncrasie ludwigienne, comme cette préfiguration du premier mouvement de sa troisième sonate pour piano ou, pour l'adagio qui suit, le deuxième mouvement de la première (plages 1 et 2 de ce CD). Ces quatuors ne connurent qu'une publication posthume, chronologiquement erronée, le dit n° 3 ayant été composé le premier, mais cet enregistrement y remet bon ordre. Plus tard aussi, il y eut un quatrième quatuor avec piano du compositeur, arrangement de son quintette pour piano et vents op. 16. Mais en attendant, musique qui s'écoute agréablement, sans aller jusqu'à l'exagération épique et survendeuse ici d'un librettiste discographique y voyant ''bien plus que d'excellentes compositions d'un super talent''. Quant aux complices de la Van Swieten Society (qui de 1993 à 2002 s'appelait Musica Classica), ils sont impeccables sur leurs instruments d'époque, sans trop tirer vers un sur-romantisme prématuré. Et peu de risque de les voir tomber un jour sur la critique assassine d'un certain Moriarty, leur bio officielle proclamant : ''Ils sont dans la lignée de héros tels que Sherlock Holmes ou l'inspecteur Morse : ils viennent dans des endroits que tout le monde pensait connaître, où ils retrouvent des détails qui ont échappé à l'attention de tous''. Bon sang, mais c'est bien sûr, rétorqua l'inspecteur Bourrel aux petits cellules grises de l'Hercule Poirot mélomane que nous sommes. (Gilles-Daniel Percet) New period-instrument recordings of breakthrough works by the teenage Beethoven. The piano quartet is an unassuming genre for a musical milestone, but it was with this trio of works that Beethoven, at the age of 15, first found the voice that would within the next half-century come to be widely recognised as the symbolic, universal voice of music, of freedom and of personal autonomy. That’s a lot for three humble piano quartets to bear, and by and large this is still young man’s music, wearing lightly the second-hand influence of Haydn and contemporary French music. This was the kind of music heard and played by the teenage Beethoven as a violinist, organist and court employee of the Elector in his hometown of Bonn.Perhaps the quartets were intended for dedication to the new elector in 1784, but in the event they remained unpublished until after the composer’s death. By then, however, Beethoven’s singular talent had already been recognised by his teacher, Johann Gottlob Neefe but his star had fallen in the eyes of his patrons who had hoped to nurture another Mozartian prodigy; in 1784 he was described to the new elector as merely a young keyboard player of ‘good ability’. That Beethoven had rather more up his sleeve is evident from the melodic thrust and rhythmic drive of the second of the set in particular, cast in E flat major. Its lyrical slow introduction, followed by a tempestuous Allegro in E-flat minor opens a door to Romanticism. The last movement with its devilish variations is technically speaking the heart of the three-part opus, which is then concluded by the almost symphonic quartet in D; D major being the key of great orchestral works featuring trumpets and timpani. The quartets are performed here in the order they appeared in Beethoven’s original manuscript rather than the confusingly different order in which they were first published. In every other respect, too, these performances by a Dutch period-instrument group named after Baron van Swieten, patron of Haydn and Mozart, pay close attention to what we know of good late-18th-century performance practice with period bowings and the light, sparking touch of a fortepiano.
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