One of the best-kept secrets of chamber music, Beethoven’s String Quintet in C major, Op. 29, forms a bridge between the well-known ‘early’ and ‘middle’ string quartets. This strangely neglected masterpiece of startling originality is coupled here with Beethoven’s own transcription for string quintet of his early C minor Piano Trio and the Fugue in D major, a musical curiosity written as an inducement to his publisher to make fewer printing errors.