"I have not a clue about late Beethoven!"
Perhaps musicians and audiences can't really plunge easily into late Beethoven.
All the extremes of late Beethoven are gathered up in a healthy Classical way.
And he seemed here to be trying to make a provocative point about the relationship of both idioms to that of late Beethoven.
I have the ear of the late Beethoven.
Today, any good conservatory string quartet could handle late Beethoven.
It ran from early Debussy to late Beethoven, with the "modern" piece sandwiched in the middle.
It also embodies certain rhetorical moves and contrapuntal gestures that are not so far removed from late Beethoven.
Except that Schubert came first; he divined late Beethoven almost before it had come into being.
Yet the young have as much right to late Beethoven as the old.