The Beethoven for Three series features three artists in pursuit of the essential elements of Beethoven's musical language, presenting Beethoven's most iconic symphonies in intimate arrangements that maintain the power and immediacy of his orchestral works. By performing the symphonies on three instruments alongside the composer’s canonical piano trios, the artists present a wealth of insight about Beethoven and his earliest audiences.

“It used to be completely normal that the first release of a symphony would not be the full score,” says Ax, “because to hear an orchestra was a very rare event. You wouldn't get that music until dozens of years later; you would get the arrangement for one piano, four hands, or trio, or quartet, and that’s how you got to know the music. So we're going back to the roots.”

The trio's newest recording contrasts Beethoven's Symphony no.6 “Pastoral” – appearing in a specially commissioned arrangement by Shai Wosner – with his Piano Trio in C minor, op.1 no.3.  Heard together, these two pieces showcase vastly different sides of Beethoven through the shared language of the piano trio. Written in Vienna when Beethoven was 25 years old, with his First Symphony still five years away, op.1 no.3 captures his transition from a virtuoso pianist to a composer in his own right. In contrast, Symphony no.6 features Beethoven in his prime, making space for something more lyrical and cinematic between the obsessiveness of Symphonies nos. 5 and 7.

Like the first Beethoven for Three release – Symphonies Nos. 2 & 5 – this recording challenges the traditional boundary between the chamber and orchestral repertoire to offer the listener two very different sides of the composer using the same three voices. It continues a musical conversation between three friends while offering audiences a rare and intimate look at Beethoven's evolution as a composer.

Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma first performed together as a trio at the 2014 Tanglewood Festival, playing a programme of Brahms's piano trios. Their first recording effort, Brahms: The Piano Trios, was released in 2017 to universal critical acclaim; Gramophone observed that “These performances get straight to the heart of Brahms’s music, relishing its pull of opposites”.