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Artist: Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos
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Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos:

Beethoven for Three - Symph No. 4, Op. 97 Archduke

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma release the latest in their Beethoven for Three series, Symphony No. 4 and Op. 97, “Archduke," on Sony Classical — available everywhere now. Accompanying today’s release is a new video of the trio performing one of the most widely loved works in classical music, the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 — watch here.  

Like the artists' two previous Beethoven for Three releases, this new recording challenges the traditional distinction between chamber and orchestral repertoire, pairing the unforgettable "Archduke" trio with one of the composer's most internally varied symphonies, thoughtfully re-arranged for piano, violin, and cello by Shai Wosner. Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 4 and Op. 97, “Archduke" is the latest chapter in three friends’ ongoing exploration of what Beethoven’s invention means for musicians and audiences today.  The Beethoven for Three series features three artists in pursuit of the essential elements of Beethoven's musical language, presenting Beethoven's most iconic symphonies in intimate arrangements that maintain the power and immediacy of his orchestral works. By performing the symphonies on three instruments alongside the composer’s canonical piano trios, the artists present a wealth of insight into both Beethoven and his earliest audiences.  ?“We all feel that being able to participate in a symphony is such a wonderful thing to do,” says Ma. “One of the things that has separated people since recording began is the categories that we put people in, in which chamber musicians, orchestra players, people who play concertos, people who do transcriptions, people who compose, people who conduct, are all viewed as separate categories with no overlap. That siloed thinking discourages actual creativity and collaboration between people. And so we feel that one of the things that is really important to do today is to actually go back to the first principles of music, the simple interaction between friends who want to do something together."  

Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos:

Beethoven for Three Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma's new album, Beethoven for Three: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 5, is available now on Sony Classical. The recording erases the border between orchestral and chamber music, presenting two of Beethoven's iconic symphonies in intimate arrangements that maintain the power and immediacy of Beethoven's orchestral works. 

Beethoven for Three transports listeners to the turn of the nineteenth century, when audiences would have been more familiar with the composer’s music in arrangements for piano trio, string quartet, or piano four hands than for full orchestra. Here, Ax, Kavakos, and Ma seek out the most essential elements of Beethoven's musical language, pairing his second symphony, arranged for trio by Beethoven's pupil Ferdinand Ries, with his fifth — among the most recognizable pieces in western classical music — in a newly-commissioned arrangement by Colin Matthews.

Performing the symphonies on three instruments is a challenge that yields a wealth of insights about Beethoven’s writing process. “The idea of actually being able to play the beginning of the fifth symphony with your hands is just an incredible thrill,” says Ax. “And you learn a lot about his kind of combination of controlled mania with an incredible lyricism — and you get so much of that in both the fifth symphony and the second. It was an incredible thrill to work on this over and over and over, just trying to get the notes.”

Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos:

Brahms - The Piano Trios

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his longtime collaborator, pianist Emanuel Ax, are joined by violinist Leonidas Kavakos in their first recording together for Sony Classical, of the piano trios of Johannes Brahms. Ax and Ma have collaborated in a distinguished catalog of Brahms recordings for Sony Classical, but this is their first recording together of the Piano Trios – and their first collaboration with Kavakos. For Ma, who believes Brahms wrote "really difficult music to play well," the collaboration with an old friend (Ax) and their new colleague (Kavakos) was an extraordinary experience. "What I was impressed by was that we could listen to a take and each one of us would make comments, but there was never a disagreement. We actually added these elements together, and it became a better performance. That was unusual. That doesn't happen often with three people, whether they know one another or not."