An excerpt from my blog (http://edward.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/~cmvhk/blog/).
I went last night to hear the Nash Ensemble play at the Assembly Rooms
in Bath:

   I had never heard of this latter piece and felt that it wasn't
   a great success; rather than an ensemble working together,
   the effect was of two horns muscling in on a string quartet
   who'd rather be left alone.  It reminded me of the chess
   problems and studies which use an implausible combination
   of pieces you wouldn't get in normal play.

When I recounted this to my husband, his reaction was 'Oh, _that_'s
the other half of _Les Adieux_'s opus number'.  We then wondered why
op. 81 is divided into a and b.  (It's not the only Beethoven opus to be
partitioned in this way).  Op.  81 comprises two works for very different
forces, one of which (the Sextet) had been composed years earlier.  So
what happened?  Did Beethoven lose track of where he was and assign the
same opus number to two separate pieces, leaving a headache for cataloguers?
Did the publisher or publishers goof?

Virginia Knight
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Personal homepage: http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/~ggvhk/virginia.html