All-Beethoven Live and Livestream Concert

by Bonnie Campbell

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)

TRIO in B-Flat Major for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano, Op. 11 

Composed late in 1797, the Clarinet Trio, Op. 11, was first performed that same year at the home of Count Fries, a Viennese nobleman. This occasion precipitated an intense, albeit short-lived, rivalry between Beethoven and Daniel Steibelt, a pianist and composer of high repute who had recently arrived in Vienna. Following the performance of the Trio, with Beethoven himself at the piano, Steibelt arrogantly played a dazzling improvisation, and Beethoven refused to play another note.

Eight days later another concert was hosted by the Count. This time Steibelt played a clever improvisation based on the theme of the final movement of Beethoven’s Trio. This so enraged Beethoven that he grabbed the cello part from a quintet that Steibelt had just written, placed it upside down on the piano, and hammered out a theme with one finger. He then astonished everyone with a brilliant improvisation that sent Steibelt storming from the room, vowing never to meet Beethoven again.

For many years, it was believed that Beethoven wrote this trio for the Bohemian Joseph Beer, considered to be the first great virtuoso of the clarinet. However, it has been discovered that by an uncanny coincidence, there were two clarinetists with the same name active in and around Vienna at the same time. It is now believed that it was the other clarinetist, whose name most often appears as Josef Bähr, who was associated with Beethoven.

There is controversy about whether it was this Bähr or Artaria, Beethoven’s publisher, who proposed that he write a work incorporating the aria, “Pria ch’io l’impegno” (“Before what I intended”) from the opera The Corsair by Joseph Weigel. At any rate, Beethoven chose to use this aria in the last movement as the basis for a set of variations. Although this theme with variations ends the work modeled on the three movement form of the “Italian” sonata, Beethoven is said to have later regretted not adding a fourth movement. Unlike many of his other works, this piece enjoyed great popularity during his lifetime.

Trio in B-flat Major for Violin, Cello and Piano, “Archduke,” Op. 97

Râmniceanu, Stone and Schmück conclude the program with Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, commonly referred to as the Archduke Trio, as it was dedicated to the Archduke Rudolph of Austria, who happened to be Beethoven's only composition student. The trio was the last work the composer wrote for this combination of instruments and is a crowning achievement in its genre. Although its piano part is devilishly demanding, the overall atmosphere of its four movements is one of great nobility and maturity, full of supreme invention and containing perhaps the most touching of slow movements the composer ever wrote. Its finale offers pure joy, transparent vitality with perky rhythms, delightful virtuoso interplay of the instruments, beautiful harmonic moves and a dazzling presto crowning the entire experience.