One of the many forms of perfection could be listening to Beethoven’s last quartet late at night under the glimmer of candles in Bantry House Library. The last works of great artists have always inspired a certain reverence, but how can we be reverential in the face of his last completed quartet. He had just completed four monumental quartets, each one composed on the back of the previous one and each one more complex and difficult than its predecessor, so it is hard not to feel that Beethoven is indulging his anarchic sense of humour in this witty and delightful work that, in many ways, feels like a homage to his old teacher Haydn.
