Alexander Melnikov & Isabelle Faust & Jean-Guihen Queyras

In the run-up to the Beethoven Year 2020, we are presenting, over a period of three seasons, all the violin sonatas, cello sonatas and piano trios. With Beethoven interpreters par excellence, Faust, Queyras and Melnikov.

Beethoven had a passion for the piano trio. In 1795 he first drew attention to himself in Vienna with his opus 1, in which three ambitious piano trios stood out for their unusual dimensions: they do not have three parts, as is usually the case, but four. Beethoven also immediately showed how expressive his chamber music is. In terms of musical intensity, they were on a par with the piano sonatas and string quartets of the age. The melodic ingenuity of the third, most daring, trio in the series, even shocked Haydn. We hear Beethoven in full force: abrupt contrasts and turbulent rhetoric, interspersed with intense pathos and lyrical desire.