LDV76

18 BEETHOVEN_’GHOST’ & ‘ARCHDUKE’ TRIOS Would you say that these are works in which Beethoven goes beyond instrumental contingencies – or even that he couldn’t care less about them, when he feels ‘the spirit speaking to him’? David Grimal: Beethoven’s output is above all discursive: it always gives priority to the musical ideas, and there are only a few phrases where we really feel comfortable with our instruments. In these trios, you can see that most of the string interventions act as punctuation. There is very little melodic material. It’s true that Beethoven is not really renowned for his melodic gifts – there’s practically only the second theme of the finale of hisViolin Concerto that really sings! One gets the feeling that none of his works, even in his great series of string quartets, was written ‘with the instrument’. It’s a style of writing that isn’t always comfortable to play. But comfort is not what Beethoven is about. Philippe Cassard: What’s striking about the piano part is that Beethoven exploits all the possibilities of the instrument, as no composer had done before him and very few would do in the forty years that followed, and at the same time one has the impression he’s utterly indifferent to what that implies in terms of technical execution. I would say there’s an absence of taboo, a total lack of inhibition: anything that can further his ideas is deployed in the parts, especially the piano part.