![]() ![]() When he was a boy, Beethoven was musically influenced primarily by Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748-98), a composer and one of Beethoven's first music teachers, Abbé Franz Sterkel (1750-1817), one of the foremost pianists in Europe, and Mozart. These are the only works Beethoven composed for this ensemble, which he abandoned for the piano trio after moving to Vienna. ![]() Material from the C major Trio was subsequently used in the Piano Sonatas, Op. The pieces were not printed until 1828 in Vienna, in the order E flat, D, and C. The same manuscript gives "basso" instead of cello, with the pieces ordered C major, E flat major, and D major. They are so early, in fact, that the autograph score calls for "clavecin" instead of piano. Good clear recordings.The three piano quartets of WoO 36, written when the composer was 15, are among the most substantial of Beethoven's earliest compositions. Everyone has fun in the ‘boys and girls come out to play’ finale. Their more introverted playing sets off the superb pianist Ian Brown – on a particularly fine Steinway – really well. Again the Nash strings are less direct, but this time it works. Primrose (as a member of the Festival Quartet) is also my exemplar in the E flat Piano Quartet, one of Beethoven’s best arrangements. ![]() William Primrose and Emanuel Feuermann (first movement only, on Biddulph) show them the way home. ![]() With the ‘Eyeglass’ Duo, the problem is that Power and Watkins, well as they play, indulge in over-elaborate phrasing for what is essentially simple music. The Nash’s Scandinavian violinists (Marianne Thorsen and Malin Broman) and British lower strings (Lawrence Power, Philip Dukes and Paul Watkins) do their best, producing consistently pleasant sounds and trying to make music written as a wind octet sound like a string quintet, but it is all a bit pallid. To borrow a phrase the composer used on another occasion, it is a cobbler’s patch. The main problem is op.104, one of those cases where Beethoven merely corrected someone else’s cack-handed arrangement. Like many sequels, this follow-up to the Nash’s enjoyable disc of the two proper Beethoven string quintets (CDA 67693) is only partially successful. ![]()
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