String Quintets Vol 1

Born in Bonn in 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven was already winning some distinction there, when, in 1787, he was first sent to Vienna, to study with Mozart. The illness of his mother forced an early return from this venture and her subsequent death left him with responsibility for his younger brothers, in view of the domestic and professional failures of his father, formerly a singer in the musical establishment of Beethoven's then patron, the Archbishop of Cologne. In 1792 Beethoven was sent once more to Vienna, now to study with Haydn, whom he had met in Bonn.

Beethoven's early career in Vienna was helped very considerably by the circumstances of his move there. The Archbishop was a son of the Empress Maria Theresa and there were introductions to leading members of society in the imperial capital. Here Beethoven was able to establish an early position for himself as a pianist of remarkable ability, coupled with a clear genius in the necessarily related arts of improvisation and composition. The onset of deafness at the turn of the century seemed an irony of Fate. It led Beethoven gradually away from a career as a virtuoso performer and into an area of composition where he was able to make remarkable changes and extensions of existing practice. Deafness tended to accentuate his eccentricities and paranoia, which became extreme as time went on. At the same time it allowed him to develop his gifts for counterpoint. He continued to revolutionise forms inherited from his predecessors, notably Haydn and Mozart, expanding these almost to bursting-point, and introducing innovation after innovation as he grew older. He died in 1827, his death the occasion of public mourning in Vienna.

The three works here included are arrangements of two trios by Beethoven and of his Horn Sonata. These were made by the Bohemian virtuoso oboist Carl Khym, whose name sometimes appears as Chym. He was born about 1770 and was thus a more or less exact contemporary of Beethoven and seems to have been in the service of the Emperor. Little is known of his life, but he left a number of chamber music compositions and competent and effective arrangements of works by other composers, with the string quintet version of Beethoven's Clarinet Trio, Op. 11, appearing in Vienna and Pest in 1810/1811, and of the Horn Sonata, published in Bonn by Simrock in 1817. The arrangement of the Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 2, seems to date from 1815. Nothing is known of Khym after 1819.