Must it be? It must be! in my last quartet
Aphorism
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Composition & Classical Music · Playing & Producing Music
I compose, conduct and play the piano. I trained in the Classical style and my music drove the move into Romantic music, expanding the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet.
When the violinist Felix Radicati said my Razumovsky quartets were "not music", I told him they were for a later age. My most demanding works were judged by the future of music, not by their premieres.
My hearing began to fail in 1798. It ended my career as a performing pianist by 1814, yet my most ambitious music — the middle period and the Ninth Symphony — was composed after it began.