CHAMBER MUSIC PROGRAM NOTES
​by Judith Eckelmeyer

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The Cleveland Museum of Art
The Images Trio

Wednesday, May 25, 1988
Saturday, May 28, 1988
​Sunday May 29, 1988
​Gartner Auditorium

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Program Notes by Judith Eckelmeyer

The Complete Piano Trios of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Introduction 

The corpus of Beethoven's trios for piano, violin, and cello is among the least-performed of his total output. Except for the "Archduke" Trio of 1810-1811, the "Ghost" Trio of 1808, perhaps the "Kakadu" Variations of 1803/1816, and possibly the third trio of the Opus 1 set of 1794-95, the bulk of the eleven pieces in the genre is basically unknown to today's audiences.

The trios seem to fall generally in the realm of Beethoven's less adventurous works. They were produced in the early to middle part of his career, from roughly 1791 to 1812, with a revision of an earlier work in 1816. They are accessible to audiences ranging widely in listening experience. The most advanced is surely the "Archduke" Trio, Op. 97. But the variety among the eleven is great: one of them admits an option for either clarinet or violin; one is a set of variations built around a folk-like  tune from a popular theater presentation; one is a single-movement work for a child performer. Others function very much like the multi-movement sonatas or chamber works of the time. There is in them no heroic striving against the traces of tradition, no grand extension of technical horizons. And yet, in their own way, the trios reveal the track of Beethoven's characteristic growth, his increasing sureness not only with the instrumental idioms but with ideas and structural matters.

The earliest trios are the three of Opus 1, the Opus 11, the variations of Opus 44, and a posthumous trio, Wo0 38. In these the piano dominates, the violin has a secondary role, and the cello is very lightly accommodated. One might speculate that Beethoven's own career as a virtuoso pianist had a lot to do with shaping these earlier trios. Yet none of the piano trios, except for the "Archduke," reveal a piano style as broad in range or expressive dynamics as that of the piano sonatas composed through the first decade of the century (the "Pathétique," "Waldstein," and "Appassionata," for example). Surely Beethoven's concern for the piano's balance with the strings accounts for this to some degree. But was perhaps his acquaintance with violin and cello so much less than his mastery of the piano so as to constrain him in these early works? We know that he took violin lessons during his first few years in Vienna, as well as composition lessons with Haydn and Albrechtsberger, especially. The contrapuntal technique which Beethoven studied so diligently at their feet is indeed only minimal in the early trios. Clearly, much compositional experience had accumulated in the period between the publication of the latest of the early works, Opus 44, and the completion of the two trios of Opus 70 four years later. In those intervening years came the fourth through eighth symphonies, all but the tenth and last violin sonata, the triple concerto and the violin concerto, and the "Razumovsky" quartets of 1805. What this body of experience made available to the last trios, from Opus 70 on, was a heightened soloist role of the cello and a firmer sense of the individual strengths of each instrument (and thus a new interaction among them); far more effective contrapuntal working among the instruments; and more interesting and skillful modes of working through content in general.

Joseph Kerman and Alan Tyson's article on Beethoven in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (W. W. Norton, 1980) concludes with a section entitled "Posthumous influence and reputation," whose thrust is the distinct difference between the nineteenth-century view of the composer and his music, and that of today, close to the end of the twentieth century. The authors point out the superhuman aura that surrounded him a century or so ago:  

Beethoven's fame was and is...more than a purely musical phenomenon. The story of his life--outwardly so uneventful, yet so full of inner pathos--became inextricably blended with the particular qualities of his music to produce a composite image which fascinated the age of Romanticism and excited a powerful, sometime baleful, effect on the careers of other musicians. More than any other composer, painter, or author, Beethoven was felt to represent the very type of the artist--a figure that came to assume mythological proportions in the Romantic consciousness. Indeed, it was not too much to speak of a Beethoven myth, based on but rapidly outpacing biographical and musical realities.

Beethoven--who influenced the course of composers such as Schubert, Berlioz, Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner, among others; who affected the literary works of E.T.A. Hoffman and Bettina Brentano in his own era; to whom world-shattering achievements were attributed in historical surveys and notes!

In this perspective, the piano trios take on a new meaning, permitting a new glimpse of the mythic composer, for these are not the olympic heights of Beethoven's career. If a single term could be applied to all of them, that word would be "pleasurable." They reflect Beethoven's enjoyment of the ensemble, his delight in the action and interaction of three solo instruments, one of which was his own. The charm and the challenge of these trios for both performer and listener are clear in the music. These are substantive works without the heady overlay of gigantic proportions; they can be playful, intense, mysterious, and even grand without cataclysm. They represent a Beethoven of human dimension, and through them Beethoven (as Kerman and Tyson put it) "has survived demythification."

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Program I - Wednesday Evening

May 24, 1988 at 8:00pm

Piano Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2
     Adagio--Allegro vivace
     Largo con espressione
     Scherzo: Allegro
     Finale: Presto
    

Piano Trio in E-flat major, WoO 38
     Allegro moderato
     Scherzo: Allegro ma non troppo
     Rondo: Allegro
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Ten Variations in G major on Wenzel Müller's "Ich bin per Schneider Kakadu," Op. 121a
     Introduzione: Adagio assai-- Tema (Allegretto) con variazioni

Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70, No. 1 ("Ghost")
     Allegro vivace e con brio
     Largo assai ed expressivo
​     Presto

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​The three piano trios of Beethoven's Opus 1 date from 1794 and 1795, following his first years of acclimatization in Vienna. By then he had undertaken study sessions in counterpoint with Haydn, who had recently returned from his first trip to England and was recognized as Europe's leading composer. It is thus a matter of curiosity that the Opus 1 works were dedicated not to this eminent teacher of the fledgling composer, but rather to Prince Karl Lichnowsky, who over a period years was one of Beethoven's most reliable aristocratic supporters. The reason for this untraditional dedication has to do with the third trio of the set, in C minor, which Haydn viewed as too radical for public consumption; he appears to have been well-disposed toward the first two.

​The G-major trio, number two of the set, has the characteristics of a standard late eighteenth-century chamber work in the style of Haydn and Mozart, except that it has four rather than three movements. The slow, dotted-rhythm introduction provides a grand ceremonial opening, much as Haydn's and Mozart's later symphonies had offered; the predominance of the piano is clear, although the violin line is contrasted well against the keyboard. The cello does not rise significantly above the role of a bass continuo.

The introduction feeds immediately into the Allegro vivace, the first theme being given in the piano and echoed in the violin. The movement's sonata form is quite unusual. The longish coda is noteworthy in that it begins with some contrapuntal intensity, but this soon falls away into homophonic figuration.

The second movement's rocking 6/8 meter provides a delightful contrast to the first movement; its E-major orientation is an early example of Beethoven's life-long fascination with third-related harmonies and key centers. The movement is a rondo, focused at length on the principal theme. Expressive dynamics abound, ranging from pp to ff, and including crescendos and smorzandos, with an occasional sf.

The scherzo movement, in G major, opens with a cello motive that quickly passes into the piano and violin. The Trio section's opening ten-measure phrase is an interesting feature, along with the B-minor orientation announced by a bold descending octave figure. The scherzo is repeated and a coda concludes the movement.

The Finale, a presto 2/4, takes the previous movement's Trio's repeated motive and reshapes it into the violin's long, repeated tonic pitch that generates an upward spurt of a triad. The effect of the comic opera in the opening theme is contrasted by the piano's sweetly descending second theme. Dynamic surprises pepper the movement, not only on main beats but, unexpectedly, at the ends of measures. The high-jinks end with a jack-in-the-box flourish.

​​The E-flat Trio was not published until three years after Beethoven's death and not assigned an opus number by him (thus the abbreviation Werke ohne Opuszahl). Compositionally it predates the Opus 1 set by four or more years. Although it has a seemingly high number associated with it as WoO 38, the style is truly very early, a product of Beethoven's Bonn years. 

The first of three movement is very short, in the traditional sonata form, and is minimally developed. Among the musical highlights are Beethoven's momentary vacillations between major and minor key orientation, his use of the recapitulation to explore a near-variation procedure in the opening theme, and a brief flush of drama in the coda before the movement ends in a cheerful vein.

The second movement scherzo, in 3/4 and also in B-flat, is very light, untroubled, and ingenious, beginning each section piano and growing only to forte, The Trio has a Ländler-like turning motive in the piano while the violin and cello harmonize the second and third beats.

The "Rondo" third movement in B-flat carries over the dance qualities of the previous movement. The cello is far more active than before. Even though the movement is titled a rondo, the traditional procedure for the form appears only loosely. Beethoven builds the entire movement around one theme which appears in altered environments, usually with little segments of different interlude materials between the theme's reappearance; even some of this material is repeated verbatim.

​The "Kakadu" Variations, Op. 121a, in G major, were originally composed in 1803 or earlier, then revised in 1816, a period where smaller, even trivial works occupied Beethoven as much as early drafts of a piano concerto and a string quintet. That this is in large part an early work of his early Viennese career is not to be doubted. The theme of the work is from a Singspiel, The Sister from Prague (1794) by Wentzel Müller, whose fame is tied up with Mozart's Magic Flute and the circle around Mozart's librettist Schickaneder. Müller, the composer, had collaborated with writer Joachim Perinet to recast an earlier work by Phillip Hafner, through whom the late eighteenth-century Viennese Singspiel tradition had taken wing. According to E. M. Batley's A Preface to the Magic Flute (London, 1969, pp. 38-40). the story is based on a commedia del 'arte plot in which a tyrannical father tries to protect his daughter from would-be suitors.

The Introduction in G minor begins with the three instruments in unison, presenting a motive almost exactly transposing the opening pitches of the "Archduke" Trio, completed five years prior to the revision of the variations. The introduction proceeds in a dramatic style with dropping arpeggiations, sforzandos, many expressive dynamics, and textural changes. It is almost a variation in its own right, more abstract and "developmental" in style, yet in it appears the first phrase of the theme that follows. The dramatic power and sophistication of the use of the main thematic material suggests that this introduction was substantially revised or even composed entirely in 1816. Variations one through nine are relatively straightforward procedural treatments of the theme and instrumental combinations. The tenth, however, is extensive, full of varied textures, ranges, keys, and technical problems. Its fugal counterpoint is mature; it extraordinary richness marks it particularly as a product of Beethoven's revision.

​The "Ghost" Trio, Op. 70, No. 1, in D major, is the first of the consistently mature works of this genre. Written in 1808 and dedicated to Countess Marie von Erdödy, it shows far more integration of the strings with the piano; in fact, the cello, increasingly liberated here, presents the first lyrical theme with piano accompaniment.

The first movement--a sonata allegro--contains many instances of Beethoven's mastery of compositional detail: syncopated layout of the unison opening, sounding 6/8 in a 3/4 meter; concluding the opening unison with a "wrong" note; use of contrapuntal activity to establish a drive to unison peaks of intensity; moments of pseudo-modulation; real modulations to third-related keys; and modulations through chromatic progressions. A structural oddity occurs in Beethoven's repeating the development-recapitualation and providing a second ending of the recapitulation to lead to a coda, which in turn is based on the opening unison theme.

The second movement, in D minor, is the source of the "Ghost" nickname. Hans-Günter Klein's notes on this work appearing on the Kempff-Szering-Fournier Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft recording, refer to Beethoven's contemporaneous sketches for a witches' chorus (for an operatic version of Shakespeare's MacBeth) as a possible source of the content and style. Two motives oppose each other in various guises throughout the movement. Beethoven also includes extensive use of one of the most characteristic harmonic structures of the emerging romantic movement--the so-called diminished seventh, with which he converts a range of effects from sorrow to horror to suspense to deep mystery. Dark trills low in the piano toward the ends of sections add an unsettling dissonance and shuddering against the two strings. The blood-curdling descending piano line against the strings close to the end of the movement is the stuff of later programmatic essays into horror music.

The third movement, Presto, begins in almost innocent glee, but half-step progressions begin to assert themselves as harmonic "goblins"--they cause abrupt, surprising, comic, and shocking modulations and resolutions that keep us unsettled. Even the melodic half-stop of the final cadence is suspect because the goblins have led us astray so often throughout the movement! 

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As The Images Trio performance is not available on YouTube, please enjoy these performances:

Beethoven's Piano Trio in G major, Op. 1, No. 2
ATOS Trio
Annette von Hehn, violin | Thomas Hoppe, piano | Stefan Heinemeyer, cello

Beethoven's Piano Trio in E-flat major, WoO 38
Violin: Itzhak Perlman | Cello: Lynn Harrell | Piano: Vladimir Ashkenazy

Beethoven's Ten Variations in G major on Wenzel Müller's "Ice bin per Schneider Kakadu," Op. 121a
Isaac Stern, violin | Eugene Istomin, piano | Leonard Rose, cello

Beethoven's Piano Trio in D major, Op. 70, No. 1 ("Ghost")
Wilhelm Kempff, piano | Henryk Szeryng, violin | Pierre Fournier, cello

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Program II - Saturday Afternoon

May 28, 1988 at 4;00pm
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Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 1, No. 1
     Allegro
     Adagio cantabile
     Scherzo: Allegro assai
     Finale: Presto

Trio in B-flat major, Op. 11 for clarinet, violoncello, and piano
     Allegro con brio
     Adagio
     Tema Pria ch'io l'impegno (Allegretto) con variazioni

Allegretto in B-flat major, WoO 39
     

Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 70, No. 2
     Poco sostenuto--Allegro ma non troppo
     Allegretto
     Allegretto ma non troppo
     Finale: Allegro

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​The opening of the first trio of Opus 1, in E-flat major, spikes the ear with a melodious sweetness and graciousness that reflect not only Beethoven's youth but his aristocratic environment in the early years in Vienna. After the opening flourishes, the melodic smoothness and light ornamentation stand out as vehicles for lovely dialogues between piano and violin (with cello looking on). Dynamic accents (f, fp, sfp) help articulate contrasting phrases but rarely syncopate.

The second-movement Adagio cantabile is a rondo in A-flat major in which the principal theme is given by the piano and is varied somewhat at its return. The first excursion features the cello; the second is an affective minor-key discourse among the three soloists. This movement has the greatest attempts at counterpoint in the work, but these are not extensive. The slow drawing-out of the movement is a fine example of what will become one of the characteristics of Beethoven's most sensitive mature works.

The rollicking scherzo is laid out like the typical dance movement but contains a developmental section leading to the return of original material in a tiny sonata form. In the Trio section, "always pianissimo and legato," chords in the strings support a transparent piano line. The movement disappears in a coda.

The Finale is ebullient. Leaps of a tenth in the piano mark the opening and are made much of in the development, recapitulation, and coda. In the last, the violin extends the leap to a twelfth, and by modifying the pitches slightly and renaming them, Beethoven slithers briefly from E-flat to E major before returning home.

​Beethoven's Opus 11 is a three-movement trio for either B-flat clarinet or violin and cello and piano. The work has little in the way of anomaly to consider. However, in that Beethoven wrote the work first for clarinet and then revised the clarinet part for violin, the work is in itself a distinctive member of the early Viennese output, with a publication date of 1798. Both versions are virtually identical, with two exceptions at the internal cadences in the first movement, where the clarinets chalumeau (lowest) registers briefly exposed. Otherwise, the line lies relatively high throughout the three movements. Structurally, the work offers little problem. The first movement is a sonata form; the Adagio second movement a lovely, lyrical expression in song form; and the last movement a set of variations on an aria from Weigl's Amor marinaro. It is worth noting, however, that in the ninth variation Beethoven presents a canonic treatment of the theme in a long passage of closed counterpoint. This marks a distinct advance from the content of the Opus 1 trios.

In 1810 Beethoven met members of the family of Bettina Brentano, sister of Clemens Brentano and wife of Achim von Arnim. Bettina was a highly educated woman, a close associate of many of the German romantics, and a writer, musician, and sculptor. Her close friendship with Beethoven over a number of years was journalized in her memoirs. Bettina's half-brother's wife, Antonie, ten years younger than Beethoven, is not thought to have been the intended recipient of Beethoven's passionate letter to the "Immortal Beloved." Antonie and her husband Franz had a daughter, Maximiliane, who by 1812 was twelve years old. It was for this "Maxe" that Beethoven wrote the piano part of the B-flat major trio in 1812. The work is a single allegro movement, now designated WoO 39. Marked Allegretto, in 6/8, it begins with a focus on the ingratiating, ingenuous piano part, gradually bringing the string parts into complement to have their say. A product of Beethoven's compositional maturity, the work has an absolute sureness of balance and tension, yet one can almost tick off the technical musical problems Beethoven gently worked into the piano part for the young performer. The work has the simplicity, without the lack of ideas, of the early works; it has structural regularity without the clichés and lack of direction of the tyro. Its inherent charm is the product of a master composer and would be destroyed with any attempt at sophistication or virtuosity. Stylistically and musically, it is one of the choicest--if hardly known--gems of Beethoven's compositional output.

The second Trio of Opus 70, in E-flat major, was like its companion composed in 1808 and dedicated to Countess Marie von Erdödy. The sense of this work is more relaxed, almost pastoral in its flow. In this respect it forms a complement of Op. 70, No. 1, and, as Hans-Günter Klein observed in his note for Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, contains technical challenges that foreshadow those of the next trio Beethoven would write, Opus 97, the "Archduke," two or so years later.

The first movement opens with a poco sostenuto introduction in common time, moving then to a gracious 6/8 allegro in sonata form, the sections of which are carefully obscured. Many of Beethoven's favorite devices are present here: modulations to distant keys, ornamental dissonances, very dense arpeggios and chords in the piano's bass range, accented syncopations, and the like.

The middle two movements, related by thirds to the first and to each other, are strongly reminiscent of older dance rhythms. The second caries a distinct bourrée rhythm; two themes, one in C major and the other in C minor, are varied in alternation throughout the movement. The A-flat major third movement has a Ländler feeling. Although it appears to be in the traditional sectional layout of dance movements of that period, by the end of the movement we realize that Beethoven has simply repeated everything to create a "five-section scherzo with an unchanging trio." in Klein's description. The Trio section is noteworthy for its chordal structure, almost Brahmsian harmonies, and extraordinary chromatic passages.

The finale is full of bright energy with much more drama than has been present in earlier movements. Variety in the pace of the music is created by triplet transitions. The retranslation from development to recapitulation builds over a long, suspenseful and dominant pedal with gradual crescendos, very much in the mode of many piano sonatas. Key content is far from traditional; among other instances, the recapitulation contains a long passage in C major which gives way to the tonic for the last theme and coda.

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As The Images Trio performance is not available on YouTube, please enjoy these performances:

Beethoven's Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 1, No. 1
ATOS Trio
​Annette von Hehn, violin | Thomas Hoppe, piano | Stefan Heinemeyer, cello

Beethoven's Trio in B-flat major, Op. 11 for clarinet, violoncello, and piano
Camerata Pacifica
José Franch-Ballester | Ani Aznavoorian |  Warren Jones

Beethoven's Allegretto in B-flat major, WoO 39
Violin: Itzhak Perlman | Cello: Lynn Harrell | Piano: Vladimir Ashkenazy

Beethoven's Piano Trio in E flat Major, Op. 70, No. 2
Istomin Stern Rose, piano | Isaac Stern, violin | Leonard Rose, cello

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Program III - Sunday Afternoon

May 29, 1988 at 4:00pm
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Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3
     Allegro con brio
     Andante cantabile con variazioni
     Minuetto: Quasi allegro
     Finale: Prestissimo

Fourteen Variations in E-flat major on an original theme, Op. 44
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Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 97 ("Archduke")
     Allegro moderato
     Scherzo: Allegro
​     Andante cantabile, ma però con moto--Poco più adagio--Allegro moderato

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The C-minor Trio, Op. 1, No. 3, was at the center of the conflict between Beethoven and Haydn during the former's early years in Vienna. Joseph Kerman summarized the situation in his New Grove article on Beethoven:

...when Haydn heard the Op. 1 trios he praised them but thought the public would not understand or accept the third, in C minor. One suspects that Haydn himself may have been put off by the extremes of tempo, dynamics, texture, and local chromatic action in this piece, and still more by the resulting emotional aura. He would not have been the last listener to find something callow and stagey,  which is to say essentially personal, in these insistent gestures of pathos and high drama. Beethoven of course paid no attention to his advice and published increasingly sophisticated C minor items in nearly every one of his composite sets of works over the next eight years...

The C-minor Trio is dominated by the piano (as are the first two works of this set). The layout is in the four-movement plan: the first a sonata form; the second, in E-flat major, a rounded-binary theme and five variations; the third, in C minor, a minuet and trio; and the fourth a sonata form. Beyond these "norms," however, Beethoven has combined an impressive, impassioned, and often curious variety of details by which (even today) we can sense Haydn's conservative discomfort and Beethoven's own delight in the work. The first movement's sardonic near-waltz is peppered with instances of chromatic progressions; dramatic, sweeping, and overlapping melodic and rhythmic currents; unexpected chords; and plenty of drive. The second and third movements seem stable and innocent enough, but the last movement, at lightning speed gives the impression of a mad whirlwind. It opens with a real "rocket" theme, forte, then settles into a breathless theme with a distracting--perhaps deliberately awkward--length of phrase. The surprises are many, including a coda that ends pianissimo in C major! The piano part also contains a few harbingers of piano sonatas to come, particularly in the closing moments of the last movement.

​Beethoven's own theme for the fourteen variations in E-flat major, Op. 44, consists of two long phrases forming fourteen measures, followed by two short phrases forming eight measures, without repeated sections. The theme is presented in disjunct notes by all three instruments in unison until the last eight measures, when the melody is more sustained. The original theme was sketched in 1794; the work was published in 1804 in Leipzig. The variation procedures are traditional for that time. The seventh variation, in E-flat minor, features lyrical presentations by the cello and violin in alternation. The eighth, with its string triplets, has a disposition and style surprisingly prescient of Schubert's music (to be developed some decades later)! The fourteenth is the most extended. In it Beethoven create repeats for phrases of the time and in "one" variation makes a series of varied sections flowing from one to the next.

The "Archduke" Trio in B-flat major, Op. 97, of 1810-11, is surely the crowning glory of Beethoven's output in this genre. Its instrumental equality and complexity of structure and idiom are but part of its achievement. There are also many markings for piano pedalling. There is a remarkable chromaticism in the scherzo that goes far beyond anything prior among the piano trios. The work has been called by some a "concerto" for three instruments. Its scope bears out Beethoven's thinking in that vein, and there are compositional elements as well as traits of grandeur that echo the "Emperor" Concerto.

Archduke Rudoph, for whom the trio is nicknamed, was not fly-by-night acquaintance of the composer. He was the son of Leopold II, whose unexpected death after two years' reign as Holy Roman Emperor opened the Hapsburg throne to Francis II, Rudolph's older brother, who was celebrated in Haydn's "Emperor's Hymn." Rudolph was a talented amateur pianist and Beethoven's pupil in both piano and composition. He was probably about sixteen years old--eighteen years Beethoven's junior--when he chose to study piano in 1803-4. The trio dedication in 1811 was thus to a young man of twenty-three. In April 1819, Rudolph was made a cardinal of the Church, and in June he was appointed Archbishop of Olmüz in Moravia. For that occasion Beethoven completed and dedicated to him the Missa Solemnis. The devoted association of the two lasted until Beethoven's death, far outdistancing Beethoven's connection with other Viennese aristocratic supporters. To Rudolph, over a period of nearly a quarter of a century, Beethoven dedicated a great number of his finest works in many genres.

The Trio is in four movements, although the third and fourth are not truly separated. The first movement is a sonata form. The presentation of material and the progress of events is on the surface quite traditional. However, a keen ear will detect that Beethoven is playing with tonal relationships in thirds. The movement opens in the tonic, B-flat, but the second key, defined by a key signature change, is G major; within the development there is a section in D major, and finally B-flat returns after an open, airy moment followed by fanfares and trills.

The second movement scherzo also opens in B-flat with a folk-dance theme. The trio section is not broken off from the first section but is audible in its vast change of style--a glowering, chromatic, four-voice fughetta that emerges, almost bursts out into a glorious chordal fanfare. Again, within the "trio," the key changes are most untraditional, with a section isolated by key signature in E major. both sections, scherzo and trio, are repeated entirely before a closing coda in B-flat.

The hymn-like theme of the third movement, in D (another third-relation), rivals Haydn's "Emperor's Hymn" for dignity of character. Was this the inspiration for the movement? Like Haydn's string quartet adaptation of his hymn, this trio movement is a set of variations, each ennobling the theme more beautifully than the last. Beethoven's care with this movement is manifested in the many pedal markings for the piano. Almost without warning, the theme transits to a new plane, resolving into a distinct polka meter in the fourth movement. At first, the structure unfolds like a rondo or sonata ronda, but Beethoven surprises us with a change of meter and key within the movement, going to A major with a gigue-like, 6/8 dance that eventually settles back into B-flat for a spectacular conclusion. 

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Judith Eckelmeyer © 1988

As The Images Trio performance is not available on YouTube, please enjoy these performances:

Beethoven's Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3
Eugene Istomin, piano | Isaac Stern, violin | Leonard Rose, cello

Beethoven's Fourteen Variations in E-flat major on an original theme, Op. 44
Piano: Wilhelm Kempff | Violin: Henryk Szeryng | Violoncello: Pierre Fournier

Beethoven's Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 97 ("Archduke")
Camerata Pacifica
Gilles Vonsattel | Paul Huang | Ani Aznavoorian

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