US TARIFFS UPDATE | August 2025 | No impact expected on your Presto orders | Read full details
Beethoven: Duos for viola and violin, Trio, Cello Sonata No.5
Maxim Rysanov (viola), Kristine Blaumane (cello) & Jacob Katsnelson (piano)
In the Clarinet Trio, Rysanov has adapted the violin part (itself Beethoven's own alternative for the perkier wind instrument) for viola. No harm in that, especially when the playing is as polished...
Beethoven: Duos for viola and violin, Trio, Cello Sonata No.5
Maxim Rysanov (viola), Kristine Blaumane (cello) & Jacob Katsnelson (piano)
Purchase product
In the Clarinet Trio, Rysanov has adapted the violin part (itself Beethoven's own alternative for the perkier wind instrument) for viola. No harm in that, especially when the playing is as polished...
About
Maxim Rysanov and friends turn their attention to Beethoven after two highly praised Brahms Viola CDs, ONYX4033 and 4054. Here we have some rare early Beethoven coupled with some late great Beethoven.
The Sonatine WoO 33 was published together with three movements for mechanical clock that Beethoven composed in the early 1790s. The Sonatine is thought to date from 1797. The Trio Op.11 was composed for piano, clarinet and cello, and here it is heard in Rysanov’s own arrangement with the viola replacing the clarinet. Beethoven’s early Serenade for string trio Op.8 of 1797 was arranged (with the composer’s lukewarm approval – he wrote that they ‘were much improved by me in places’) for viola and piano in 1804 as Op.42. The version used here of the 'Theme, Variations and March' is by William Primrose. Finally, from the composer’s later period, we have the last of his five cello sonatas played by Kristine Blaumane and pianist Jacob Katsnelson.
Contents and tracklist
- Maxim Rysanov, Kristina Blaumane
- Maxim Rysanov, Kristina Blaumane
- Maxim Rysanov, Jacob Katsnelson
- Maxim Rysanov, Kristina Blaumane, Jacob Katsnelson
- Maxim Rysanov, Kristina Blaumane, Jacob Katsnelson
Awards and reviews
November 2012
In the Clarinet Trio, Rysanov has adapted the violin part (itself Beethoven's own alternative for the perkier wind instrument) for viola. No harm in that, especially when the playing is as polished as this. But the lone masterpiece here is the Cello Sonata, Op. 102 No. 2, and Kristina Blaumane and Jacob Katsnelson really plumb the depths of its great Adagio.
Awards Issue 2012
This is the kind of disc that could easily get overlooked, offering as it does a potpourri of mostly lesser-known Beethoven. But that would be a great shame, for it's packed full of delicious surprises, superbly played...there are plenty of opportunities to relish the beauty of Maxim Rysanov's sound in the upper reaches...The rip-roaring finale [of the Clarinet Trio] is particularly effective, dancing with wit and rhythmic elan.
5th August 2012
Arranging and unearthing are key words here...Hard though it might be to sum up this assortment in a simple category, it is chamber music playing of intimacy, range and flair.
10th August 2012
the individuality and strength of idea that Beethoven brings to a classical format is dynamically vivified; the Clarinet Trio sounds thoroughly idiomatic in its viola manifestation; and Katsnelson and Blaumane give a sublime, sinewy performance of the Fifth Cello Sonata. A fascinating disc.
