Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" and Leonore Overture No. 3

Anyone familiar with Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony is likely to take one look at this album and ask, “They couldn’t, could they?”. Surely a work so reliant on orchestral colour and contrasting textures, where sheer weight of sound is seemingly so important, would fall flat in an arrangement for three strings—violin, viola, cello—and piano. Any doubts are swept aside by the work’s opening chords, as audacious here as in the most dynamic of orchestral performances. Hardly a second passes without some fresh detail of Beethoven’s score catching the ear: listen to those ringing dissonances about a third of the way through the first movement and the intense musical conversation that follows, or the overwhelming force of the finale’s intricately woven counterpoint. While the string playing balances breathtaking beauty and creative daring throughout, Emanuel Ax conjures a multitude of convincing sonorities from the piano as he navigates Shai Wosner’s compelling transcriptions of the “Eroica” and the third Leonore Overture. All in all, an astonishing achievement.