Starting from the magisterial trios of Beethoven and Brahms, clarinetist Daniel Ottensamer, cellist Stephan Koncz and pianist Christoph Traxler began a journey to explore the influences these works exerted on other composers.  As they moved further and further away from their point of departure, their search took them through several centuries and across every continent and their project burgeoned into a comprehensive anthology. “Our initial idea was to juxtapose these mainstream works with contemporary pieces, but our work on this project eventually got so out of hand that there was no end to the works that we discovered for our ensemble,” Koncz explains. “In all of them the tonal variety of the clarinet and the interplay between the three instruments is explored in completely different ways.”

The three performers decided to focus on pieces that had originally been written for their particular resources and not to include the many arrangements that exist. They begin with Beethoven’s op.11 and end with Magnus Lindberg’s Clarinet Trio, in which all three instruments are taken to their limits in terms of their sonorities and technical capabilities. Between these two extremes lies a long and exciting journey which, as all three musicians have noted, keeps returning to the musical tradition of their home city of Vienna.