Festival mainstays Kristin Ahlstrom, Bjorn Ranheim, and Peter Henderson will be your guides through Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat Major. Better known as the “Archduke,” its dedicatee was Archduke Rudolph of Austria, a musical dilettante and gifted amateur pianist. Full of originality, the 45-minute work was Beethoven’s final full-scale piano trio and ranges from joy to sadness with outbursts of bluff good humor. The work’s first performances with the increasingly deaf composer, accompanied by Ignaz Schuppanzigh on violin and Josef Linke on cello, would mark Beethoven’s last public appearance as a pianist.
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