The "unknown Beethoven" designation in the graphics for this release is a stretch: the album contains an arrangement for which Beethoven had at most partial input, as well as four works for mandolin and piano (hardly well known, it must be admitted) arranged for cello and piano by the present performers. The major claims here are made for the Sonata for piano and cello in E flat major, Op. 64 (not "cello and piano," for the cello has a distinctly accompanimental role). This work is an arrangement of the six-movement String ...
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The "unknown Beethoven" designation in the graphics for this release is a stretch: the album contains an arrangement for which Beethoven had at most partial input, as well as four works for mandolin and piano (hardly well known, it must be admitted) arranged for cello and piano by the present performers. The major claims here are made for the Sonata for piano and cello in E flat major, Op. 64 (not "cello and piano," for the cello has a distinctly accompanimental role). This work is an arrangement of the six-movement String Trio in E flat major, Op. 3, a work heavily influenced by Mozart's Divertimento for string trio, K. 563, in the same key and written just a few years earlier. Since it was published with an opus number, a process over which Beethoven generally exerted at least some control, the arrangement was for a time taken to be Beethoven's own work, but then was removed from the canon and ascribed to one Fr. X. Kleinheinz. The only direct testimony comes from Beethoven's brother Caspar Carl, who...
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