Emanuel Ax, piano Leonidas Kavakos, violin Yo-Yo Ma, cello

In 1802 Beethoven wrote an odd letter to the music publisher Breitkopf and Härtel, thanking them for turning down the idea of putting out transcriptions of his music. “Concerning the arrangements of the pieces,” he wrote, “I am heartily glad that you rejected them. The unnatural rage now prevalent to transplant even pianoforte pieces to stringed instruments, instruments so utterly opposite to each other in all respects, ought to come to an end. I insist stoutly that only Mozart could arrange his pianoforte pieces for other instruments, and also Haydn.” 

This is a measured statement of artistic philosophy, but in coming years Beethoven contradicted it regularly. For one example, his early Septet in E-flat, Opus 20, a minor work but the most popular thing he ever wrote, was issued as a piano trio. The reason had mainly to do with money. Transcriptions of pieces were regularly published in those days and later, for practical more than artistic reasons: if a work could be issued in multiple versions, its composer could be paid over and over for the same notes. 

Later transcriptions of Beethoven in his lifetime were generally advertised as done by “the author himself,” but they generally were not. As his pupil Ferdinand Reis recalled: many pieces “were arranged by me, revised by Beethoven, and then sold as Beethoven’s by his brother.” Part of Beethoven’s annoyance in the letter above was because his brother Carl, acting as agent, had offered a transcription to Breitkopf without asking him. (Another occasion of Carl offering things to a publisher behind Beethoven’s back led to a public fistfight between them.) 

So transcriptions are an old tradition in music, and they exist for various reasons. There is the art and aesthetics of transcription, and the economics of transcription. Multiple versions meant more income for the composer, but also more exposure of the work and more material for musicians, especially in a time when most music was played, often by amateurs, in private settings. In those days chamber music was never heard in public. If you had a good piano player in the house, having a string quartet arranged for piano trio was good material for your parlor concerts.  

This concert has two familiar orchestral pieces arranged for piano quartet by pianist Shai Wosner: the Leonore No. 3 Overture and the Third Symphony, Eroica. Orchestral music boiled down to four players might come as a surprise, but there is a lot of precedent for that too. Several Mahler symphonies have been arranged for chamber groups. Works can also be reworked in the other direction, like Leopold Stokowski’s inflations of Bach organ works into grandiose versions for orchestra. Music is more malleable than we might imagine. What ended up as Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor went through a series of avatars, one of them for orchestra (which he contemplated but never attempted), and is published both in quintet form and in a version for two pianos. Schoenberg arranged Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G minor for full orchestra, partly just because, as he said, “I like this piece,” and partly because the quartet really does seem to reach beyond its medium.  

There is also a tradition of works done with suggested alternatives, such as the Brahms Clarinet Quintet that the composer said could be done with viola rather than clarinet. On our program, Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat, Opus 11, was published as playable with either clarinet or violin on the top part. It’s a minor early work in three compact movements, generally neglected but entirely agreeable. One word for the trio’s spirited first movement might be the German gemütlich, which translates as an occasion of cozy, wine-enhanced good cheer among friends. Next comes a serene, lyrical, a touch poignant but still gemütlich slow movement. The finale is variations on a popular opera tune of the day, which led to the piece’s sometime nickname, Gassenhauer, which means “street song.” Starting with the perky and gay theme, the variations go on to be surprisingly forceful and diverse in the context of a generally unassuming piece.  

The two transcriptions on the program are quite another matter, both of them condensing monuments of the orchestral repertoire. One of those, the epic Eroica, had a seminal impact on the whole of Western music to come. The number three on the Leonore Overture reflects the situation that over the course of the history of Beethoven’s sole opera, which included two thorough revisions, Beethoven wrote four overtures for it. No. 3 was actually the second written, and is the best known as a concert work. (We know the opera as Fidelio, but Beethoven preferred the original title Leonore, after its heroine.) 

Why four tries for the Fidelio overture? The essential reason is that, on the one hand, Beethoven was determined to write opera because that was another genre that he wanted to master, and because if you wanted acclaim and profit as a composer in Vienna, opera was the best route. The trouble was, neither in temperament nor experience was Beethoven an opera composer. By the time Mozart reached his mature operas he had written a row of them in his teens, and he was fundamentally a man of the theater. Neither of those things applied to Beethoven. Nor did he share Mozart’s fascination with human foibles. 

So, after Beethoven’s revisions and three failed attempts at an overture, the opera still has its issues in terms of musical and dramatic consistency, and in pacing. Fortunately, it also has some of the greatest music in all opera. In addition to his dicey sense of the stage, meanwhile, Beethoven didn’t want to write a conventional overture. As shown in Leonore No. 3, in the first three tries what he did instead was to write, in essence, tone poems that tell the story, from Florestan languishing in the dungeon dreaming of love and freedom, to the dramatic unveiling of the heroine, to the trumpet announcing the fall of the tyrant, to the triumphant conclusion. Finally, Beethoven realized that he was compromising his story by anticipating it, and anyway the pieces were too expansive to be overtures. In the final Fidelio overture he gave in to convention and wrote a showy curtain-raiser with little connection to the story.  

In paring down a big, kaleidoscopic orchestral work the piano has the critical role, because it can cover and represent far more of the texture than a violin or cello. The goal, in this sort of endeavor, is to produce a piece that as much as possible sounds like it was written for that ensemble in the first place. As a pianist who has studied composition, Shai Wosner begins from that understanding. He’s helped by the fact that much of the overture is highly melodic, which can be well handled by the strings. The orchestral accompaniment to the melodies has to be turned into idiomatic piano writing. Here Wosner echoes the kinds of figuration you find in Beethoven’s violin and cello sonatas.  

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Eroica, was at its premiere the longest, most complex, most intense, most ambitious symphony ever written. Essentially it set the model for most symphonies to come, showing that a work for instruments alone could have the emotional power, the drama, even the poetry of a literary work or a piece with voices. Much of that quality came from the inspiration: it was written as a symphony called Bonaparte. So it was based on the French conqueror, who in those years was the most powerful man in the world, after whom the Napoleonic age is named. A mighty theme demanded a mighty work, and Beethoven supplied it. When it was done, hearing that Napoleon had crowned himself emperor of France despite having declared himself a champion of democracy, a furious Beethoven scratched his name off the title page and renamed it Eroica, “heroic.” 

From early on the complex, searching, surging first movement has been understood as a picture of a battle or a military campaign, with its main theme representing the Hero. Second is the aftermath of the battle, a mournful and profound funeral march. The return to life and joy is represented by a scintillating scherzo. In a series of variations, the finale transforms a simple dance tune into an eloquent evocation of human aspiration and triumph.  

In transcribing such an essentially orchestral work for piano quartet, Wosner had to create a varied, intense, often two-fisted and virtuosic piano part to reflect the relentless searching quality of the music, particularly the first movement where nothing settles down, all is in flux. The result is not a feeling of a chamber piece, rather a work of epic scope for four people, all of them required to be outsized in their playing. With their celebrated history as chamber musicians and collaborators, this evening’s performers are more than up to the task. 

— Jan Swafford 

Jan Swafford is a prizewinning composer and writer whose most recent book, published in December 2020, is Mozart: The Reign of Love. His other acclaimed books include Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, Johannes Brahms: A Biography, The Vintage Guide to Classical Music, and Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music. He is an alumnus of the Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied composition.  

Caramoor is grateful to Boston Symphony Orchestra for permission to reprint the above program notes, which were originally written for the Tanglewood Festival. 

Born to Polish parents in what is today Lviv, Ukraine, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed by the Avery Fisher Prize. In the 2024/25 season he will appear as guest soloist during the New York Philharmonic’s opening week which will mark his 47th annual visit to the orchestra. He will return to the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, National, San Diego, Nashville and Pittsburgh symphonies and Rochester Philharmonic. A fall recital tour will culminate in the spring in Chicago and his annual Carnegie Hall appearance. Additional performances include a special project in duo with clarinetist Anthony McGill, chamber music with Itzhak Perlman and Friends, and an extensive European tour. Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched a multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first three discs have been released. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas and for recordings with Yo-Yo Ma. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust. In 2013, Mr. Ax received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year. Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University. 

For more information about Emanuel Ax, please visit his website.

Leonidas Kavakos is recognized across the world as a violinist and artist of rare quality, acclaimed for his matchless technique, his captivating artistry and his superb musicianship, and the integrity of his playing. He works regularly with the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors and plays as recitalist in the world’s premier halls and festivals. Kavakos has developed close relationships with major orchestras and has succeeded in building a strong profile as a conductor. Highlights of the 24/25 season in North America include a recital tour performing Bach’s complete Sonatas and Partitas, and recitals with Daniil Trifonov. Elsewhere, he takes his ApollΩn Ensemble on tour to Asia and conducts the Israel Philharmonic. He continues his partnership with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma in trio concerts at major European venues. In 2025, Kavakos will be the new Artistic Director of the classical music festival of the Lotte Concert Hall in Seoul, Korea. Kavakos is an exclusive recording artist with Sony Classics. Recent releases include Bach: Sei Solo and the re-release of his 2007 recording of the complete Beethoven Sonatas with Enrico Pace, for which he was named Echo Klassik Instrumentalist of the year. He also released Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 4 and Op. 97 ‘Archduke,’ the third in a new series of Beethoven recordings with Ax and Ma. Born and brought up in a musical family in Athens, Kavakos curates an annual violin and chamber music masterclass in Athens, which attracts violinists and ensembles from all over the world. He plays the ‘Willemotte’ Stradivarius violin of 1734.

For more information about Leonidas Kavakos, please visit his website.

Yo-Yo Ma’s multi-faceted career is testament to his belief in culture’s power to generate trust and understanding. Whether performing new or familiar works for cello, bringing communities together to explore culture’s role in society, or engaging unexpected musical forms, Yo-Yo strives to foster connections that stimulate the imagination and reinforce our humanity. Most recently, Yo-Yo began Our Common Nature, a cultural journey to celebrate the ways that nature can reunite us in pursuit of a shared future. Our Common Nature follows the Bach Project, a 36-community, six-continent tour of J. S. Bach’s cello suites paired with local cultural programming. Both endeavors reflect Yo-Yo’s lifelong commitment to stretching the boundaries of genre and tradition to understand how music helps us to imagine and build a stronger society. Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris, where he began studying the cello with his father at age four. When he was seven, he moved with his family to New York City, where he continued his cello studies before pursuing a liberal arts education. Yo-Yo has recorded more than 120 albums, is the winner of 19 Grammy Awards, and has performed for nine American presidents, most recently on the occasion of President Biden’s inauguration. He has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of the Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Birgit Nilsson Prize. He has been a UN Messenger of Peace since 2006, and was recognized as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. 

For more information about Yo-Yo Ma, please visit his website.