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Title: Excessive, painful, unnecessary
Review: The lady and three gentlemen make every effort to reaffirm the populist cliché of Beethoven the Madman. Perhaps this is a small triumph in itself. Beethoven's sadistic (perhaps also masochistic?) outbursts make for a heavy meal even on paper and with this new recording the shock value is doubled by the use of period instruments and playing techniques. It is a sawing of the most cruel kind. The amount of discomfort brought by listening to the op. 135 quartet can compare to, say, post-Stockhausen trauma. Or perhaps Elliot Carter. Or any number of last century's modernist pricks. Eroica Quartet seem to be advancing boldly into the 19th century quartet repertoire (next victim is Florestan himself!). I say, keep your hands off my Brahms!
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