Harp Attack — The first Tasting Music performance of the 2013 Season of WWCMF rolls into the historic trolley house, home of Canoe Ridge winery.

Canoes and trollies were pretty good modes of transportation back in the day, but we prefer to be transported by incredibly beautiful music, and Beethoven’s String Quartet in E Flat, Op. 74 fits the bill. Known affectionately as the “Harp” quartet (so named for the plucked arpeggios that get passed among the instruments in the first movement), this work ushers in the tail end of Beethoven’s so-called “middle period.” Cast in the heroic key of E Flat, the quartet begins with appropriate solemnity. The first movement’s principal theme is sweeping, and the movement closes with dramatic virtuoso passage work in the first violin. In the third movement, the C minor of the scherzo suggests that we are in for one of Beethoven’s fire and brimstone sermons. However, the quartet relaxes as it goes, and when it concludes most gently and humorously, one is left with the feeling that he has had a harp attack. Is there a doctor in the house?

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 74, “Harp”

I. Poco adagio - Allegro

II. Adagio ma non troppo

III. Presto - Più presto quasi prestissimo

IV. Allegretto con variazioni

Artists: Timothy Christie, Norbert Lewandowski, Stephen Miahky and Maria Sampen