Podcast No. 86
Three’s Company (49.46 MB)
Works for string trio performed by Musicians from the Ravinia Festival Steans Institute, and for piano trio performed by violinist Timothy Fain, cellist Marcy Rosen, and pianist Jeremy Denk.

•Beethoven: String Trio in G Major, Op. 9, No. 1
•Ives: Piano Trio

Today we focus on significant trios, from the old and new worlds. A relatively early trio, Beethoven’s String Trio in G Major, may have been an experiment with some of the ideas he would later bring to the symphonic realm. Beethoven plays with form in the movements, surprising listeners with stop-and-start repeats in the scherzo and vividly contrasting themes in the final movement. Charles Ives’ Piano Trio, completed in 1911, went unperformed for years, finally unearthed in 1948 by a music faculty trio in Ohio. In typical Ives fashion, snippets of a number of folk and popular songs interject, particularly in the scherzo. Listen for, among others, "My Old Kentucky Home," "Sailor's Hornpipe," "and "Long, Long Ago".