Trio Talweg

HERITAGE

LISZT
‘Tristia’ — La Vallée d'Obermann
transcription for piano, violin and cello

CZERNY
Trio in A minor, Op. 289

BEETHOVEN
Trio in B flat major, Op. 97 ‘The Archduke’

This programme invites us to travel back in time, from flamboyant Romanticism to its origins. Opening with Franz Liszt, a visionary figure and virtuoso, we hear the culmination of a legacy brought to its peak: formal freedom, expressive power, spectacular expansion of the pianistic language.

Returning then to Carl Czerny, our perspective changes. Too often confined to his role as a teacher, he appears here as an essential link: direct custodian of the Beethovenian tradition and architect of its transmission, he embodies the balance between fidelity to the model and adaptation to new sensibilities. It is a work that captivates with its virtuosity, emotional power and tenderness.

Finally, the path leads to Ludwig van Beethoven, the living source. His music reveals the matrix from which subsequent audacities spring: dramatic tension, architectural density, broadening of forms and the affirmation of a new subjectivity.

As we move through this programme from the most recent to the oldest, listening becomes an investigation: as we go back to Beethoven, the connections become apparent, the echoes become clearer, and we understand how a musical idea is transmitted, transformed and amplified over generations. This return to the origins retrospectively illuminates everything that preceded it, revealing the profound continuity of the same creative impulse.

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In quartet with Magalie Mosnier, flute

BEETHOVEN
Trio Op. 97 in B flat major, ‘Archduke’
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 – transcription by J. N. Hummel for trio with piano and flute

The Archduke opens the evening in a sovereign and generous light; Beethoven at the height of his mastery. With the 5th symphony, the world changes its face. Barely three years separate these two works: the time for Beethoven to move from fulfilment to struggle, from grace to conquest.

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BEETHOVEN
Trio, Op. 70 No. 1, ‘The Spirits’
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 – transcription for trio by the composer

Six years separate the Second Symphony from the ‘Spirit Trio’; six years that represent an abyss in Beethoven's life. And yet, something passes from one to the other: a theme, a colour, an obsession. Listening to these two works in succession is like witnessing a conversation Beethoven has with himself across time, in the same luminous key of D major, as if the composer were retracing his own steps to erase and magnify them at the same time.