The Arnica Quartet is going to tackle Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue this season, and I was made aware of two cool youtube clips concerning this greatest and wildest of late Beethoven quartet movements. The first (thanks to Elaine Fine at Musical Assumptions) is a visual representation of the fugue:
The second is a clip from a biopic about Beethoven, with – wait for it – Ed Harris playing Beethoven. It concerns the copying of the fugue with dramatic music, etc.:
And finally, the Alban Berg Quartet playing the whole shebang (in two parts, due to YouTube’s length restrictions):