Chandos is proud to present volume six, the final volume in its complete series of Beethoven string quartets with the legendary Borodin Quartet; a series which has steadily gained respect with each successive release. The quartets contain some of the greatest, most enigmatic music ever written, played here by one of the world’s finest ensembles.

This is the final volume in a praised series.

The legendary artists provide unique insight to these works.

This Beethoven cycle is completed on the Borodin Quartet’s 60th anniversary.

A 3-CD set for the price of 2 full-price discs

Founded in 1945 the Borodin Quartet is the world’s longest-lived String Quartet, with an unparalleled reputation and history, and boasts among its members cellist Valentin Berlinsky who has performed with the quartet from its inception. Although the ensemble has performed an extensive range of the vast string quartet literature, the players have a particular affinity for the quartets of Beethoven. Completing the cycle are his virtuosic Op.18 quartets, which look back to Haydn and were the first quartets composed by Beethoven. Commissioned by Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz, each of the six quartets has a distinct personality and Beethoven was careful about the relationships. They are rarely recorded as one set.

Beethoven turned to the challenging genre of the string quartet when he was twenty-seven, and created the last quartet of his astonishing cycle some twenty-eight years later, shortly before his death. The Borodin Quartet’s record-breaking career spans twice that length of time, and yet it has only recently realised what Berlinsky calls ‘the great dream of my life: to play all of Beethoven’s quartets from first to last’. It is fitting, therefore, that Chandos releases the final volume during the Borodin Quartet’s sixtieth birthday year.