Beethoven: Trio, Op. 97 Archduke by Eugene Istomin, Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose (2024 Remastered, 1965 Winterthur)

Beethoven's chamber music includes some of the finest works ever written for this repertoire. The andante cantabile of Op. 97 is one of the most beautiful pre-romantic reveries to emerge from the composer's imagination. It is this third movement, in which, according to Beethoven, "happiness metamorphoses into emotion, suffering, prayer...", that elevates this trio to the rank of exceptional works. And, as luck would have it, it's a theme and variations, in which Beethoven once again revolutionizes the art of variation.

Everything here exudes grandeur, culminating in the most compelling plenitude. Oratorical and sincere, lyrical to the highest degree, Beethoven's Trio Op. 97 is the crowning achievement of the genre, whose vast dimensions demand the complicity of the listener. From its public premiere in May 1814, this serenely triumphant landmark work aroused the enthusiasm of contemporaries and, later, of the great Romantics, and throughout the nineteenth century, composers as diverse as Saint-Saëns, Lalo, Brahms, Smetana and Dvořák, fascinated by the work, could never overshadow it when writing their own trios.

The Stern-Istomin-Rose version is one of the greatest interpretations of the 20th century: powerful, epic, and intense. The remastering provides an unprecedented presence and warmth to the strings, which had previously remained slightly overshadowed by Istomin's piano in earlier editions.