Beethoven: Piano Trios Vol. 1 – Busch Trio

Born of a friendship formed at London’s Royal College of Music over 10 years ago and boasting a discography of seven recordings, the Busch Trio takes its name from the legendary Adolf Busch, whose G.B. Guadagnini violin Mathieu van Bellen has the honour of playing. Van Bellen and the Epstein brothers — Omri on piano and Ori on cello — now launch their ambitious project of recording the complete Beethoven piano trios. The first instalment contains the Op. 1 trios (Nos. 1 and 3), the first compositions by the young Beethoven who had left his native Bonn to study with Haydn in Vienna in 1792. Although Beethoven did not write a concerto for a wind instrument, he did compose a great deal of chamber music for them, including the Trio in B flat for piano, clarinet and cello (1798), although designing it so that the clarinet part could also be performed on the violin. The playful theme of the variations in the finale earned the trio its nickname, “Gassenhauer”; (street or folk song).