Beethoven For Three

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma's new album "Beethoven for Three: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 5" erases the border between orchestral and chamber music, presenting two of Beethoven's iconic symphonies in intimate arrangements that maintain the power and immediacy of Beethoven's orchestral works. Beethoven for Three transports listeners to the turn of the nineteenth century, when audiences would have been more familiar with the composer’s music in arrangements for piano trio, string quartet, or piano four hands than for full orchestra. Here, Ax, Kavakos, and Ma seek out the most essential elements of Beethoven's musical language, pairing his second symphony, arranged for trio by Beethoven's pupil Ferdinand Ries, with his fifth — among the most recognizable pieces in western classical music — in a newly-commissioned arrangement by Colin Matthews.

Sony Classical is pleased to present Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma's Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 4 and Op. 97 “Archduke," which will be released March 15, 2024.

Pizarro's acclaimed second disc of Beethoven sonatas, beautifully played on a Blüthner piano. Beethoven's last three sonatas mark a culmination in the classical-romantic sonata form, and Beethoven's farewell to the genre. Pizarro explains: "Beethoven not only aesthetically and emotionally heralds the arrival of the Romantic Age in music but also profoundly alters what had been the accepted parameters of sonata form. Man has become the centre of the universe as can be heard through the outpouring of emotion, as human condition and the circle of human life is depicted in these three works.

This extraordinary pianist studied the piano at the Moscow Conservatory with Emil Gilels and Yakov Zak…

Beethoven’s three sonatas for Piano and Violin Op. 30 were dedicated to Tsar Alexander 1st. He had been educated by his grandmother Catherine the Great and was considered to be a true child of the Enlightenment. The three manuscripts of the Op. 30 sonatas are among the most expressive of the surviving original material of Beethoven’s chamber music. These works were a direct result of the collaboration with Beethoven’s violin teacher, Ignaz Schuppanzigh – who was in fact the dedicatee of the Op. 12 sonatas. The final piece on the CD was written by another significant influence on Beethoven’s work – Franz Clement. This is the third disc in a series that sets Beethoven’s sonatas in their social and musical context – in this case the context being Schuppanzigh.