Beethoven: Sextet, Op. 71 & Septet, Op. 20

Album review

On this 1974 recording, Beethoven's Septet, Op. 20 -- despised by the composer but still a popular piece of light music -- is paired with the less familiar Sextet, Op. 71. The Sextet is an early work despite its high opus number, first written around the time Beethoven moved to Vienna but not offered to a publisher until the era of the mighty Symphony No. 5. This work too Beethoven disparaged, but as annotator Gerhard Pätzig rightly noted, he knew he was releasing something worthwhile -- an exceptionally accomplished realization of Classical models. The work owes less to Haydn, whose bumpy relationship with Beethoven was just beginning when the work originated, than to Mozart's wind serenades; its slow movement is exceptionally attractive, and there is a delicacy of spirit in the work that doesn't seem to come from Beethoven's abrupt soul but makes for very pleasant listening. Delicate is the word, too, for the performance by Dieter Klöcker and his Consortium Classicium; the Septet, especially, has been infused with a good deal more humor, but one suspects that the Viennese mid-nobles who prized this Beethoven work above the amazing things that were happening in his career between 1800 and 1810 would have loved this smooth and graceful performance. This is an intelligent pairing that will fill a hole in many a Beethoven collection, and a recording fully worthy of the well-engineered reissue offered here.
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