Tom Connor wrote:

>Bernard Chasan wrote:
>
>>And if Beethoven did not have wealthy and musically sophisticated patrons,
>>he still probably would have been in financial straits.  Somehow I do not
>>believe that the late quartets were big crowd pleasers.
>
>Is my memory wrong, or do I recall reading long ago that the late Beethoven
>Quartets could not be performed during or immediately after Beethoven's
>lifetime? That it was Joachim Quartet 50 or so years later which had the
>technical competence to perform them.

According to the jacket of my Columbia LP (ML 4006) of the Budapest String
Quartet (Roismann, Schneider, Kroyt, and Schneider) playing Beethoven's
Quartet No. 15 in a minor, Op. 132, it

   "was finished about August 1825....[and] received its first performance
   in November of that year by the Schuppanzigh Quartet, that notable
   ensemble that gave most of Beethoven's quartets their first
   presentation.  Though the work was well received by its first hearers,
   it was not liked everywhere....

"*La Revue Musicale* printed the following criticism of a performance...on
March 6, 1831:

   'Part of the evening was devoted to one of the last quartets (in A
   Minor) of this extraordinary artist.  Here, I must confirm, it seemed
   to me that genius was overwhelmed by fantastic extravagance.  Without
   doubt the work could only have been written by Beethoven, and one
   recognizes his style from time to time, but these moments are few
   and far between.  The first movement, the least involved of them all,
   is nevertheless full of harmonic vagueness which offends a sensitive
   ear.  The *menuet* and *trio* recall the Master's finest period, and
   have the greatest novelty of effect.  The *Adagio* is a thanksgiving
   offered to the Almighty on convalescence after a long illness; one
   can only express doubt as to whether the Master was yet quite restored
   to health....As to the last movement, comment is impossible; one must
   respect even the aberrations of so great a musician.'

   "Slightly less tolerant was H..Blanchard who, on April 15, 1849,
wrote in the *Revue et Gazette Musicales de Paris*:

   '...one imagines that the musicians for whom it is a foregone conclusion
   to admire anything that Beethoven wrote, and who are forced to admire
   these last works of the great composer's decadent old age--one imagines
   that these musicians, possessing only a smattering of the knowledge
   of beautiful sound, will be hastened on their way to join the uncultured
   adherents of musical romanticism, which the great writer has thus
   opened out to them.'"

Walter Meyer