Beethoven for Three Series. Vol 5

Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’ and Leonore Overture No. 3
Arranged for piano quartet by Shai Wosner

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, And Yo-Yo Ma
with violist Antoine Tamestit

Sony Classical G010005914541O
https://www.sonyclassical.com/home

Beethoven's Eroica gains chamber intimacy — and a fourth voice — in the latest instalment of Ax, Kavakos and Ma's ongoing project

Bernard Levin was a great communicator and arts journalist; one only has to read Enthusiasms, or his collected articles for the Times, to know it. I recall him writing about the sheer, explosive energy of hearing Beethoven's Eroica Symphony for the very first time — how the music filled him with such a sudden, overwhelming surge of heroic idealism and revolutionary spirit that he felt a literal impulse to go out and free the Low Countries. What, I wonder, would he make of this recording, another instalment in the Beethoven for Three series? I would hope he might be similarly stirred, even if the Low Countries can, for now, rest easy.

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma here offer Symphony No. 3 'Eroica' and the Leonore Overture No. 3, joined for the first time by violist Antoine Tamestit, so that a trio becomes a quartet for the occasion. The label frames the series as one that puts "three friends in pursuit of the essential elements of Beethoven's musical language" before audiences, "presenting his most iconic symphonies in arrangements for small groups" and giving listeners, as they put it, "a rare look at Beethoven's compositional language at its most intimate and raw." It is a persuasive idea, and on this evidence a durable one.

There is real rhythmic pulse and energy here, and a textural detail in Ax's piano playing that is a constant pleasure — every inner line audible, every line singing, with a beauty in the phrasing that never tips into preciousness. The Leonore Overture in particular sounds astonishingly orchestral in this reduced scoring; the changes of tempo are superbly judged, the observation feels authentic rather than merely careful, and the playing throughout is slick and fabulous in its precision. Sony's engineers have captured it brilliantly. This is a series worth collecting for the musicianship alone — three outstanding musicians who, for this instalment, become an outstanding four.

Yo-Yo Ma frames the project's philosophy in terms that go beyond this one disc: "One of the things that has separated people since recording began is the categories that we put people in... That siloed thinking discourages actual creativity and collaboration between people." Ax, for his part, points to Beethoven's own era, when "the first release of a symphony would not be the full score" but an arrangement for piano, trio or quartet — "and that's how you got to know the music." It is a reminder that what might look like a novelty is in fact a return to how this repertoire first reached its public.

Tamestit's arrival suits the project well: a founding member of Trio Zimmermann with a tone the label calls "rich, deeply coloured", he adds real weight to the quartet arrangement, prepared by pianist and composer Shai Wosner, whose earlier arrangement of the "Pastorale" Symphony was singled out by Gramophone for honouring Beethoven's original writing "without being confined by it." The same could be said here.

Beethoven's own relationship with heroism, of course, was more complicated than Levin's youthful epiphany might suggest: begun as a tribute to Napoleon, the dedication was torn from the score once Bonaparte crowned himself emperor and Beethoven's admiration for him curdled into disgust. That ambivalence — heroism examined rather than simply celebrated — comes through in this performance more than in many full-orchestra accounts I know.

Levin, I think, would have approved. I merely reviewed it from an armchair, and felt no urge whatsoever to liberate anywhere.