Thanks to a tempting commission from Prince Franz Joseph Lobkowitz, Beethoven finally wrote his first collection of string quartets in the late 1790s.

The Elias String Quartet places the Op. 18 set’s high-spirited G major quartet in company with the contemplative introspection of his late String Quartet in Eb Op. 127 and the rhythmic vitality and emotional depths of the composer’s first ‘Razumovsky’ Quartet.