Beethoven The Complete Piano Trios By Trio Elegiaque -- AN INDEPTH REVIEW

Here, for all piano trio aficionados, is the complete-complete oeuvre of Beethoven in that genre. This set includes not only all the opus-numbered trios, not only the “Kakadu” Variations and Variations on an Original Theme, op. 44, but also both trios without opus numbers (including the obscure Allegretto, Hess 48) and trio reductions of other works: the Second Symphony, the famous Septet, and the String Quintet, op. 4. In short, if you like Beethoven in a piano trio mode, this set is heaven for you.


Moreover, Brilliant Classics has really lucked out with Trio Élégiaque. Its members are all laureates of major international competitions: violinist Laurent Le Flécheur, pianist François Dumont, and cellist Virginie Constant. The liner notes tell us that they had “several meetings with members of the Beaux Arts Trio, Amadeus, and Alban Berg Quartets” which helped them formulate their style of playing chamber music. 

The result is a group very much like Beaux Arts, certainly a lot like the original Beaux Arts when they had the sweet-toned, elegant violinist Daniel Guilet heading the group. Trio Élégiaque practically oozes French elegance and charm, particularly violinist Le Flécher, whose tone and technique reminded me not only of Guilet but also of Jacques Thibaud, and pianist Dumont, whose light but rhythmically propulsive playing recalls any number of outstanding French pianists. These qualities find their way not only into the mature works, but also into the early ones. 

The op. 1/2 Trio that opens disc one is a perfect case in point: Their mellifluous reading of the opening Adagio practically floats on a cloud. At first, I heard this as a possible danger point for the set—I hoped they would not stay light and airy even when the music turned more dramatic—but I shouldn’t have worried. Though this trio will not erase memories of Thibaud-Cortot-Casals, they share with that legendary group a penchant for bringing more out of the music that is apparent in the printed page. True, their style leans more towards coaxing sounds out of their instruments rather than the kind of deep drama that Cortot and especially Casals were capable of, but it’s not at all bland playing. On the contrary, one stays mentally tuned in to them because their playing is so subtle—until they pull out the stops, as in the Finale of the op. 1/2, where they take off like birds riding a jet stream.


And just listen to the way they tear into the opening movement of the “Ghost” Trio! Even Yehudi Menuhin, playing with his sister Hepzibah and cellist Maurice Eisenberg, didn’t take it at this blistering a speed. Yet Trio Élégiaque loses nothing in terms of elegance, instrumental control, or dynamics; on the contrary, it’s all there, just spun out at a pace that takes your breath away—as it should. Nor does this Trio slough off the early trios: Listen to the way they manage to bring out Beethoven’s peculiarly galumphing humor in the E? Trio WoO 38.


I was particularly fascinated by Dumont’s style. Unlike many Beethoven pianists, his playing isn’t “dynamic” in the sense that the music explodes from his fingers. Rather, he produces an excellent legato by means of connected, pearl-like notes that almost emerge from the keyboard as if they were played on the vibes. At times, he creates an almost shimmering sound; at others, a crisp, clean articulation that accents no particular notes in his scale-runs yet somehow manages to make the entire scale-run sound dynamic via subtle crescendos that encompass the whole of each passage.


I’m not a fan of transcriptions, even when the composer himself does them, unless they have some interesting features about them (new textures, different balances, etc.). Consequently, I can’t say that I looked forward to hearing these trio transcriptions of the Symphony No. 2, String Quintet, op. 4, or the Septet. 

The Trio plays them very well, with verve and charm, but not with enough of the peasant humor Beethoven put into the first and third of them. (I might add that neither this transcription nor the original String Quintet is particularly interesting as music.) Thus I found them to be good but not revelatory. Also, after nearly a century of recordings, it’s hard to find anything new (or revelatory) to say with the “Archduke” Trio. This performance focuses on the music’s refinement of ideas, something new for Beethoven at this particular time, and thus comes across as a good reading without exactly stealing one’s breath away.


I did, however, find myself caught up in their brilliant performance of the op. 11 Trio, titled “Gassenhauer,” and it was indeed a gasser! They also have fun with the variations on I am the tailor Kakadu . As for the trio arrangement of the Septet, I’m sorry, but it’s just too empty-sounding. Not enough “voices,” and I don’t want to hear the Scherzo there played on a cello. I want to hear a horn.


All in all, however, this is a remarkably good set. Don’t mind my quibbles; they may not be yours. Where it really matters, in the early and little-known pieces, Trio Élégiaque is simply splendid. 

Credits : Arkiv Music 
  

Beethoven's Profound Piano Quartets

The Three Piano Quartets were written when the Composer was only 15 years old.

They are among the most profound of Beethoven's Earliest Compositions.

When Beethoven was very young, He was musically influenced mostly by Christian Neefe a Composer and one of Beethoven's First Music Teachers. He was also highly influenced by Franz Sterkel -- One Of the Best Pianists in Europe at that time as well as by Mozart.

Of all influences on the Young Beethoven, Neefe's was immediate and Mozart's extremely profound.

The First of Beethoven's Quartets is based on Mozart's K- 379/373a, the Second on K 380/374f and the Third on K - 296. All 3 Piano Quartets are in 3 Movements.

The E Flat Major Quartet is unique in that its slow first movement jumps without waiting into an Allegro Con Spirito in E Flat Minor.

The E Flat Minor Movement in Sonata Form features an extremely small development but has some adventurous passages in its recapitulation. The Final Movement is a set of 6 Variations in an ornamental style on a High Classical Era Theme with 2 Eight Measure Segments.

Each of the Segments is repeated, the First Moving to the Dominant and the Second returning to the Tonic. Beethoven follows this pattern in all of the variations the fifth of which is in E Flat Minor.

After the Awesome Variations have been done with the theme returns only slightly differently followed by a movement of the first variation.

It should be remembered right here that The Piano dominates the Musical Scene Completely.

Beethoven Set the D Major Quartet in a more traditional way, with a slow central movement encompassed by two fast ones.

The Opening Allegro is in Sonata Form and is modulated to the dominant Key. Boasting a much larger development section than that of the E Flat Quartet, the movement touches on D Minor before it recapitulates again.

The Second Movement in F Sharp Minor is in two parts and is aptly named Andante Con Moto.

The Piano opens the concluding Rondo with a movement of Youthful Energy dominated by the Keys.

Finally, We come to the Third and Final Piano Quartet. What Does Beethoven have in store for us here ??

The Quartet in C Major has 3 Movements, the second of which is in a laid back F Major.

After a Brief Development Section, Beethoven commences the recapitulation on the subdominant -- a procedure Schubert would make use of in several of his Piano Works.

The Second Movement features some of the most melodic passages of Beethoven's Youthful Days though his tendency to double most of these robs them of some of their delicate nature.

Nearly, all of the Thematic Material in the closing Rondo is concentrated in the Piano Part.

The Art of Playing And Understanding Beethoven's Razumovsky String Quartets

They are not easy listening and even harder to play.

Beethoven's three "Razumovsky" string quartets left both their first performers and the public shocked and suspicious. The violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, whose quartet premiered the Opus 59 works, complained they were unreasonably difficult. After playing the opening solo from the second movement of the first of the three quartets, cellist Bernhard Romberg threw his music to the ground and stamped on it.

What sort of sorry substitute for a tune was this? How insulting to give a cellist of his stature such a banal rhythm, the sort of thing anyone could tap out with a pencil!

Meanwhile, the violinist Felix Radicati is said to have complained these were "not music".

"They are not for you, but for a later age," Beethoven told his critics.

Commissioned in 1802 by Count Razumovsky to write three new quartets, Beethoven surprised his Russian patron by presenting him with lengthy compositions that express intense, shifting emotions. Imagine the scene: the guests at Count Razumovsky's new Viennese palace, after a sumptuous meal, pause on the terrace to look down over the Danube and spires of Vienna; they adjourn to an elaborate concert hall to listen to these brand new works. But the opening music of Opus 59 No 2 is hardly an aid to digestion: two loud chords followed by a bar's silence.

A few bars of breathless, mysterious music and another silence. It was like nothing they had heard before. The complicated rhythms and dialogue between the different parts must have perplexed anyone encountering them for the first time. Schuppanzigh had good reason to feel worried about the music – exposed runs and leaps that cover the whole range of the violin with alarming velocity.

But it was not only the technical demands that disturbed these early interpreters. They suspected that the music was inappropriate – that it did not behave as classical chamber music should. The movement that so offended Romberg is marked sempre scherzando – "always jokingly". With its unpredictable changes of emotion and texture, the musicians probably felt that the joke was at their expense.

A sweet melody has only just got going when it peters out to be replaced by an aggressive rhythm. Very loud passages end abruptly and are superseded by cheeky, quiet music that seems to bear no relation to the previous music. The last bars of the movement feature wrong-sounding notes righted only by emphatic final chords.

The closest thing to a favourable review of Beethoven's new quartets was published in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung on 27 February 1807:

"Three new, very long and difficult Beethoven string quartets … are attracting the attention of all connoisseurs. The conception is profound and the construction excellent, but they are not easily comprehended."

Although the Razumovsky Quartets are today among Beethoven's most popular works, it's worth reminding ourselves of those first reactions – which can inform our own approach to this radical music.

The Takács Quartet begins a year-long traversal of the complete Beethoven cycle over six concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Playing the works is a thrilling and daunting experience. We feel like tennis players forced out of position, obliged to draw on our physical and mental resources to raise our game. We have rehearsed this music for many years, but performing a Beethoven quartet still inspires an exhilarating sense of danger.

There's a short passage during the last movement of Opus 59 No 2 that raises our blood pressure however many times we perform it. We throw a three-note figure from one instrument to the next as if engaged in a frantic relay race. No sooner has a player grabbed the baton than it must be passed on to the next, who gives it on to the next, now back to the first, and so on, to create a musical line that whirls us back to the opening tune.

If someone misses an entrance, the resulting hole is as comical as the culprit's desperate attempt to recover. A late entrance results in collision with the following player – who drops the baton altogether while the others wait in confusion, wondering what to do next. In rehearsal such an accident is amusing, in a concert less so.

Playing the passage is easier if we approach it like a technical study, concentrating merely on entering at the right time. But to bring out its mischievous character requires an element of risk. Although we know this passage so well that it whirls around in our heads during sleepless nights, on stage it should sound spontaneous. We vary slightly the dynamics and timing each night – spontaneity helps maintain the illusion that the music is being created for the first time.

The thrill of Beethoven's quartets comes in part from the combination of virtuosic difficulty and emotional intensity. In the second Opus 59 quartet's first movement, sudden changes of dynamics, unexplained silences and breathless digressions draw us into a drama where emotions are barely under control.

It would certainly be easier to manage the music if we could play in a detached manner, keeping our muscles loose and remembering to breathe deeply. Frequent breaks to towel down, eat a banana and do some yoga stretches would be handy in performance as well as rehearsal. Yet the turbulent character of this music is impossible to achieve if the performers appear to be holding back. In rehearsal we often alternate approaches, playing first slowly and comfortably, then with maximum commitment, trusting that our joints will remember to stay supple as we become more emotionally engaged.

Communicating sudden and extreme shifts of emotion in Beethoven's quartets requires a combination of abandon and control. Beethoven follows the whirlwind ending to this first movement with an Adagio molto, apparently composed after contemplating the stars at night.

Celestial serenity brings solace after the turbulence of the first movement, but this shift from one mood to another is a challenge. As we play the first quiet notes with smooth and slow bows, our hearts are still racing from the previous movement. I try to communicate an atmosphere of peaceful wonder aided by a large bead of sweat that tickles its way down my nose before splashing on to the top of my violin.

Our rehearsals give us time to explore different musical possibilities and return to familiar passages to question our interpretation. How best to create the maximum shock with those chords at the beginning of Opus 59 No 2?

Our cellist András worries that we are using too much bow and should focus more on a crisp initial attack. We send him out into the hall to gauge how distance affects the impact. He confirms that the violin sound is too shallow and needs more bite. Geri, our violist, reminds us to freeze in the following silence – the suspense will be lessened if I fidget on my chair.

At the beginning of the slow movement Károly suggests that I play with a less rich sound. When he joins in with the second violin part we will be able to make a purer sound together – more like a church choir. Encouraging each other to try different approaches helps us to stay true to the searching spirit in the music.

Although Beethoven would no doubt be happy that his quartet cycle is now celebrated as mainstream chamber music repertoire, he might have derived his greatest satisfaction from the music's continuing ability to surprise and challenge. He never wanted his performers and audience ever to become too comfortable. The experience of the first players and listeners can still inspire us.

Credits : The Takacs Take on Beethoven's Razumovsky String Quartets
               By Edward Dusinberre
               November 5, 2009
               The Guardian
               United Kingdom 

A Stupendous Task Regarding Beethoven's Complete Piano Sonatas

Andras Schiff has just come to the end of a project to record all of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas for the ECM label, a project he put off for years until he felt he was ready.

"For me, these sonatas are the most stupendous journey. They give a complete picture of how Beethoven developed though his creative life."

Preparing these pieces meant first of all paying close attention to the text. Schiff found this could sometimes yield surprises. "Take the famous Moonlight Sonata," he says.

"Beethoven marks it 'senza sordino' [without mutes] throughout, and in piano music that means 'without dampers'. That blurs all the harmonies together, which at that date was a very bold thing to do, and most pianists shy away from it." But not this one.

Another example comes in Beethoven's most titanic piano sonata, the famous Hammerklavier.

"Many people say that the metronome mark of the opening movement is simply impossible, and there are quite a few other pianists, even great ones, who make it seem very heavy and turgid. But it's not impossible, it's just difficult."

But what about that famous leap for the left hand at the beginning, which strikes terror into every pianist?

"Well, yes, it's really dangerous at that speed, but that's how it's supposed to be. You know, I would rather cut my hand off than divide that leap between the two hands, the way some pianists do."

This "close reading" of Beethoven underlies several striking moments that you might think are simply Schiff's personal take on the music. There's a moment in his recording of the Hammerklavier where he makes an enormous pause on a particular chord.

"Yes, I know the chord you mean. That's an example of how analysing the way a piece works helps you to make it more expressive. That chord is so remote from the main key, and I wanted to emphasise that sense of being at the furthest point from home."

But not everything Schiff finds in these great pieces is so abstract. Humour is there, too. "You know that G major sonata, the one where the hands are misaligned?" he asks. "To me, it's like a parody of those pianists who can't or won't play with the hands together.

"The slow movement of that sonata is humorous, too. It's full of exaggerated operatic pathos, with this florid melody over a simple bass. If you take it seriously, it's absurd. I think Alfred Brendel was right when he described it as a parody of Italian opera.

"One thing we know about Beethoven is that he was really annoyed that Rossini's music was so much more popular in Vienna than his, and this sonata is a kind of revenge."

At the opposite pole are the moments of stillness, where Beethoven seems to be peering into the infinite. "I love these moments, which often sit right next to a bit of rough humour. This is what gives Beethoven his Shakespearian breadth.

"In his late sonatas, Beethoven creates aural symbols of the transcendent, in a way no other composer had before him. Take the very last piano sonata he wrote. The first movement is heavy and earth-bound; the second lifts up to heaven. The sound has no bass, it seems to float at a great height, and time is suspended."

Finally, Schiff is starting to get animated. As he talks, he makes arabesques with his hands, as if moulding an imagined musical phrase. What fires this man is the never-ending process of getting closer to a great work, a process that involves so much more than mere accuracy.

"You know, as a performer you have duties and you have liberties," he says.

"And one of the liberties is highlighting those moments where the music is at a crossroads. You can help the listener to be aware that the music has an inner freedom, so it could have gone another way at that point.

"The final instalment of Andras Schiff's complete Beethoven sonata cycle was released on the ECM label on Oct 29, 2007. He appeared with bass Robert Holl at the Wigmore Hall on Nov 13, 2007.

Credits : How Andras Schiff Completed All Beethoven's Sonatas
              By Ivan Hewett
              23 October 2008, The Telegraph
              United Kingdom 

Anne Sophie Mutter and Beethoven's Absorbing String Trios

It seems that in regard to string trios, three’s a crowd, with little appeal for composers who since the Baroque era have preferred to write for string quartets or other chamber formations.

The catalog for musical threesomes is relatively small: Boccherini wrote a dozen pieces for violin, viola and cello, and Mozart contributed a significant work. In the 20th century, composers, including Webern, Xenakis and Schoenberg, added to the genre. Beethoven wrote five string trios early in his career, three of which were performed on Sunday afternoon at Avery Fisher Hall by the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, the cellist Lynn Harrell and the violist Yuri Bashmet.

The focal point in this celebrity trio was certainly Ms. Mutter, artist in residence at the New York Philharmonic this season. The three musicians have different performing styles and here Mr. Bashmet and Mr. Harrell seemed content to play second fiddle to Ms. Mutter’s more dominant personality.

Beethoven’s string trios, now infrequently performed, were all written before 1798; when he began composing string quartets shortly afterward, he never revisited the string-trio genre.

The afternoon concluded with the earliest work on the program, the String Trio in E flat (Op. 3), Beethoven’s first effort in the genre, written before 1794. This sunny work echoes Mozart in sound and structure (if not in substance), with the same six-movement layout as Mozart’s Divertimento for String Trio (K. 563).

Here and in the two works before intermission, Ms. Mutter was the more aggressive player, her powerful sound a contrast to Mr. Bashmet’s warm, buttery tone (too infrequently heard throughout the concert) and Mr. Harrell’s more lyrical approach.

The program opened with a fast-paced rendition of the String Trio in C minor (Op. 9, No. 3), a key that Beethoven frequently used and that is often associated with his stormy artistic character. The opening movement hints at the turbulence to come in some of his string quartets.

Credits : The New York Times
               November 15, 2010 

Getting To The Heart of Beethoven

The Budapest String Quartet has always been my standard-bearer for chamber music. I grew up listening to their recordings, and specially admired not only their gorgeous sound, but also the uncanny interaction among all four players, even when there were changes in personnel. They had a way of playing as if they were speaking to each other, expressing deep and sometimes complicated feelings.

One of my most memorable concert experiences was the only time I ever heard the Budapest in person, when I was 20. The concert was sold out, but the management decided to sell seats on the stage. It was like being in a room and overhearing an enthralling conversation only a few feet away.

I learned the Beethoven quartets under two remarkable circumstances. I took an amazing course on the quartets in college, directed by the great violinist and historian Boris Schwarz (no relation). Instead of playing recordings, he assembled a string quartet from the faculty with himself on first violin.

Each musical illustration was presented by the live musicians, and after each lecture, the group would play the entire quartet. One summer, my undergraduate mentor invited me to house-sit at her Greenwich Village studio while she was on vacation. I wouldn't have to pay rent if I promised to listen to her recordings of the Budapest Quartet playing Beethoven.

The Beethoven quartets are, maybe along with his 32 piano sonatas, a kind of lifelong spiritual autobiography. Like Shakespeare, Beethoven starts out by showing his influences while he is already striking out on his own, keeping well within the old 18th-century formal boundaries but leaving behind the sublime nuances of Mozart and the refined wit of Haydn for a new Romantic energy.

When he returns to quartet writing in the middle of his career, his ambitions are more vast. He expands the very nature of the string quartet.

The works are denser and grander yet more personal, like Shakespeare's dark comedies. Near the end of his career, Beethoven completes five more quartets, and these so-called "late quartets" rank among the most extraordinary compositions in all of music — longer than any previous string quartet, infinitely more complex in form as well as in content.

The quartet No. 15 in A-minor became the model for T.S. Eliot's great poetic meditation on time, the Four Quartets. One of the quartets is in seven movements, instead of the usual four. One movement — a Great Fugue — is so convoluted and intense, it's on the edge of atonality, and it's so long that Beethoven ended up making it a separate, independent Opus.

There are three complete recorded cycles of the 16 Beethoven string quartets by the Budapest Quartet. My touchstone is still the set they made for Columbia in the early 1950s, playing the magnificent instruments owned by the Library of Congress. This complete series has never been issued on CD in this country. There's also a remarkable series on the Bridge label: live concerts at the Library of Congress between 1940 and 1962.

And now, more than 50 years after its original LP release, Sony has finally issued a CD of the studio recordings the Budapest Quartet made in the late '50s and early '60s, in stereo. Some of these performances are less subtle and less purely beautiful than the earlier set, but they have their own large dimension of drama and power and heart, and are equally indispensable.

Credits : Budapest Quartet Gets To The Heart Of Beethoven
              By Lloyd Schwartz
              October 16, 2012 

Beethoven's Amazing Piano Trios

An intuitive collaboration between Alexander Melnikov, Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras brings sensitivity and lyricism to Beethoven's Piano Trios. 

 

Put three such stylistically perceptive young musicians as Alexander Melnikov, Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras together and you can anticipate a result no less than stimulating. True to expectations, their playing, their sensitivity and the way they interact with each other lend their performances of Beethoven's final two piano trios both vitality and stature.

The slow introductory phrases of the E flat Trio Op 70 No 2 immediately define the ensemble's interpretative stance: the violin and the cello are virtually vibrato-less, and the keyboard is a fortepiano. In fact, it is a restored Viennese fortepiano of about 1828, somewhat later than either of these trios but not to the extent of being disturbingly anachronistic.

The instrument, which comes from Melnikov's own collection, has a lovely mellow, ample timbre with a pearly glow on which he capitalises in playing of refined shaping and clarity. Faust (on a 1704 Stradivarius) and Queyras (on a 1696 Giofredo Cappa) do not forsake vibrato altogether as the E flat Trio progresses, but they use it sparingly for expressive effect, in a manner that could well have been the norm in Beethoven's own day.

Equally, those phrases that they play with no vibrato at all take on an eerie, withdrawn quality that arrests the ear, not in a negative self-conscious way but as a reasoned, plausible component of a dramatic colour scheme. There is certainly no shortage of energy or conviction in their propounding of the musical arguments in the first movement or the scurrying, excitingly accented finale.

The judiciously applied palette of weight, touch and tonal variety that so animates the E flat Trio is similarly in evidence in the great "Archduke".

Here Melnikov, Faust and Queyras give the music proper space to breathe in the broad first movement while keeping a firm hand on the structural reins.

The playing throughout the trio is thoroughly attuned to the tone and emotional scope of the music, profoundly rapt in the andante and perkily whimsical, explosive and propulsive in the gloriously idiosyncratic finale.

Credits : Beethoven's Piano Trios -- A Review
               By Geoffrey Norris
               20 February, 2014
               The Telegraph, United Kingdom