This week we arrive at the scherzo of the Beethoven quartet. This movement – very unusually for a scherzo – is in sonata form (as are all the movements of the quartet). It is full of surprises and makes a excellent foil to the lyricism of the first movement.The scherzo of Mahler’s fourth symphony is a slightly (but only slightly) grimmer affair. It originally had the title Freund Hein spielt auf (Friend death strikes up) and uses a retuned – a tone higher – violin to produce the sound of the eerie, scratchy, folk-fiddle which, in German folklore, death uses to lead us to the ‘beyond’.
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