This is only added as a completion to the video series for previous movements uploaded to KZfaq by Allegrify. Click this link to a playlist for all four movements in order.
• Beethoven, String Quar...
The movement commences with a fugal exposition where instrument after instrument--viola, 2nd violin, cello and first violin--enters with a virtuous theme that is ten bars long instead of the expected classical eight. In fact, this theme has been prepared by the themes of each of the previous movements, each of which is a pre-echo in some sense of the contour of the head of this new theme.
Partially because of this, the eruption of the last movement feels like something that is revealed at long last, having been close at hand all along, and something liberated. It is a perpetual motion and thrives on speed. This movement--being one of the most celebrated movements in all the Beethoven quartets due to its infectious energy--must have been in the mind of the young Mendelssohn as he composed the exuberant finale of his great Octet, another great favorite of chamber music lovers around the world.
Sheet music and audio is from IMSLP under Creative Commons License.
imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_...)
Performers: Amedeo Modigliani Quartet