The third Razoumoffsky Quartet stands among Beethoven's chamber compositions very much as the C minor Symphony among his orchestral works. To define the qualities in virtue of which these two cognate works appeal so very strongly and directly to the imagination is a matter of great difficulty. They belong to the same period; and, utterly dissimilar as they are in form and detail, they are akin to one another in spirit. Both reveal the composer during that short but golden prime of his artistic life when he had done with technical experiments; and when that austere indifference to mere sensuous beauty of sound, which in course of time his deafness inevitably brought, had not yet begun. Hence these works, though they fall far short of the exaltation, intensity, and rugged grandeur of many third-manner compositions, are more perfectly balanced. They are also entirely free from certain perverse--one may almost say misanthropic--elements which are a stumbling-block in much of Beethoven's music. Such is the felicity of the invention that each new thematic element strikes the ear like a sort of revelation. Nowhere is there an overlong development or anything that bewilders or alienates. The Andante quasi Allegretto of the Quartet reveals the composer in an extremely rare mood. The delicate romance of it recalls the slow movement of the Schumann Quintet, however much more profound Beethoven may be. The harmony is full of dreamlike beauty, and here and there accents of extraordinarily eloquent appeal give that impression (so frequent with Wagner) of music trembling on the verge of articulate speech. A case in point is the recurring G flat in the viola part in bars 8, 9, and 10 after the second repeat. The pizzicato bass is another feature that irresistibly arrests attention. The unparalleled delights of this enchanting work were brought home to the audience by a performance which was not only masterly but was stamped by peculiar felicity. Everything in the marvellous Allegretto was thrown into a kind of delicate relief, and the fugal finale was given with the utmost animation and perfection of detail. [Sidenote: =Bach Concerto in D Minor.= _January 15, 1903._]