Into Uncharted Territory Beethoven’s Piano Trios
Har r y Haskell
An offspring of the Baroque trio sonata, the piano trio— usually denoting a work for piano, violin, and cello—was still in its infancy when Beethoven penned his first essay in the genre around 1791. Although he declined to assign an opus number to the early Trio in E-flat major (which would be published posthumously in 1830), the composer reportedly considered it “one of his worthiest experiments in the art of composition.” A celebrated concert pianist, Beethoven had mixed motives as a composer: his piano trios were designed both to showcase his own virtuosity and to experiment with musical forms and techniques that would bear fruit in other genres. In adopting the four-movement format associated with the symphony and string quartet, for instance, he distanced himself from the three-movement piano trios of Haydn and Mozart. Equally significant was the increasing independence that Beethoven awarded to the three instruments. That his three Op. 1 trios of 1795 still privileged the keyboard was signaled by the first edition’s title page, which billed them as “composed for the piano,” with “violin and violoncello” printed below in lighter, less conspicuous type. Between then and 1816, when he bade farewell to the genre with the effervescent “Kakadu” Variations—probably composed as early as 1802–3 and revised more than ten years later—, Beethoven took the piano trio into uncharted territory, placing ever-greater demands on listeners as well as performers.
