After "Inventions", Apotheosis is the third and last volume in a complete set of the Beethoven quartets that breaks new ground: it aims to regroup the works according to their position within the three broad creative divisions of the composer’s life – the formative years, the ‘heroic’ period and the ‘late’ period. This programme assembles the ‘late’ quartets in a new sense, in other words those works in which the stylistic innovations of each of these creative periods reach their full flowering. © harmonia mundi