Beethoven applied the subtitle ‘Serioso’ to his Op. 95,a mark of its specific gravity and a reflection of thecomposer’s increasingly difficult personalcircumstances.

The Navarra String Quartet prefacesBeethoven’s concise masterwork with twocompositions of contrasting emotions, opening withHaydn’s sonorous Op. 20 No. 2 before plunging intothe highly dramatic flow of Schubert’s Quartettsatz.