Triple Concerto & Archduke Trio

The piano trio was the ensemble type with which Beethoven opened his series of works published with opus numbers in Vienna in 1795. In his Triple Concerto, published as Opus 56, Beethoven confronts this genre with a large orchestra. Anton Schindler, since 1822 Beethoven’s self-named secretary and also his first, sadly all too often untrustworthy biographer, stated that the piano part of the trio instrumentation was specified for Archduke Rudolf; but the facts do not support this. The Archduke was only sixteen years young when the work was written around 1804, a year marked by the composition of the Third and Fifth Symphonies, Fidelio and the “Appassionata”, and when the Triple Concerto was put to print in 1807 the piece was dedicated not to a schoolboy from the Imperial House, but to another member of the high nobility and confidant of the composer, Prince Lobkowitz.