Born in Clermont-Ferrand (west of Lyon) to a French mother and an English father, George Onslow (1784-1853) was a composer and performer with a considerable reputation in both Germany and France during his lifetime. Onslow was a ‘gentleman composer’ – which is to say that he was from a famous noble British family and had an independent income. That gave him the freedom to write whatever he wanted; and as a capable cellist, Onslow was particularly interested in chamber music. In total he wrote 36 string quartets, 34 string quintets, four symphonies, four operas, a number of songs, piano pieces, and a variety of other chamber works including sonatas, piano trios and wind ensembles. Much of this music was published during his lifetime, and three of the four operas were staged in Paris at the Opéra Comique.

Onlow’s early string quartets – the piece we hear was written when he was about thirty – sound much more like Haydn than Beethoven. And in fact, we know that Onslow was absolutely unmoved by Beethoven’s late quartets, which he called ‘mistakes, absurdities, the reveries of a sick genius … I would burn everything I have composed if I someday wrote anything resembling such chaos’!

‘I think it comes from the fact that both of us were young exactly during Beethoven’s last years, and his manner and way was thus easily taken up in us.’

• Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel to Felix Mendelssohn, 1835

You’ll notice that Schumann puts Onslow’s name next to that of Felix Mendelssohn in the review quoted above. But Felix’s elder sister Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel (1805-47) was also a formidable composer. She was strongly discouraged by her father and other male relatives (including Felix) from publishing her music, since publishing counted as ‘trade’ and she was a well-to-do lady from a rich and highly regarded family. But her husband, the artist Wilhelm Hensel, was wholly supportive of her wish to both compose and share her works with the world; and so in the very last years of her life, Mendelssohn-Hensel did have the opportunity to see at least some of her many excellent works in print.

As she says in this letter to her brother, the Mendelssohn siblings were in their teens and early twenties during the last years of Beethoven’s life and had the chance to study his latest compositions as soon as they became available. Mendelssohn-Hensel’s one and only String Quartet is modelled in part on Beethoven’s ‘Harp’ Quartet; but it was originally written as a piano sonata and only transformed into a chamber work in 1834. Felix was sceptical of this piece when Fanny sent it to him for his comments, because he felt that the influence of Beethoven was too obvious. But his sister refused to change a note, despite his feedback. And even Felix admired this pointy-edged Allegretto unreservedly, writing to her that it was his favourite movement.

‘Rest assured that as an artist I cherish the greatest goodwill for you and that I shall always endeavour to prove this to you.’

• Beethoven to Czerny, 1816

Last but not least comes one of the most important musicians to carry forward Beethoven’s legacy into the later nineteenth century. Carl Czerny (1791-1857) started piano lessons with Beethoven when he was about ten and seemed destined for a career as a virtuoso performer. But his health was not robust enough for a life on the road, and he instead dedicated himself to teaching (from the age of fifteen) and composing. Over a long and busy career, Czerny published over 800 opuses, including symphonies, sacred music, chamber works… and a lot of music for solo piano, including treatises and teaching volumes. He also became a leading authority on performing Beethoven’s own music, particularly after the older man’s death.

But if you’re picturing a fusty old professor with a sense that things should be ‘just so’, nothing could be further from the truth. Czerny was well aware that tastes changed, and performance styles might too. He was pragmatic, hard-working and clearly a kind and much-admired teacher, numbering Franz Liszt among his pupils and Fryderyk Chopin among his friends. He apparently wrote as many as thirty string quartets, but they were never published and probably weren’t performed during Czerny’s lifetime – so this is a precious, rare opportunity to hear his music. In the movement that ends our concert, Czerny’s theme sounds suspiciously like it’s been lifted from Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata for solo piano, Op. 13: a direct and very touching act of homage from a grateful pupil to a beloved teacher and friend.

© Katy Hamilton