Beethoven: Fifteen Variations and a Fugue in E-flat Major, Op. 35 Beethoven: String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4Both of the pieces on today’s podcast were written by the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven in the early years of his career. Beethoven was a virtuosic pianist who often impressed patrons and audiences by performing his own compositions and then improvising extensively upon them. Today, his Fifteen Variations and a Fugue for solo piano is often nicknamed “The Eroica Variations” because Beethoven re-used the main theme of this piece for the finale of his Eroica Symphony. The String Quartet in C Minor, one of Beethoven’s first string quartets, is elegant and agile, while still displaying strong marks of the composer’s famously dramatic temperament. Right from the opening of the first movement, we hear a stormy melodic line over driving bass notes. The line rises and increases in intensity, spilling over into an abrasive and disruptive series of chords. Even in his early works, Beethoven chose confrontation over simple closure.