From the pen of the fifteen-year-old Beethoven, these three piano quartets are among the earliest examples of a chamber music genre that would not reach full maturity until the time of Brahms. Beethoven’s path-breaking essays stand beside those of Mozart (Naxos 8.554274), also dating from the mid-1780s. In them the teenage composer and virtuoso pianist exuberantly explores the relationship between the strings and piano, and would later borrow from them for his Piano Sonatas, Op. 2 (8.550150). With this recording the New Zealand Piano Quartet makes its Naxos début.