Trio giving first performance of 'lost' Beethoven work

CHICAGO — Nearly 182 years after Beethoven's death, three musicians are getting ready to give the first known performance of a lost piano trio by the immortal composer.

The 12-minute trio in E flat will be performed Sunday, along with the North American premieres of two other once-lost Beethoven pieces — piano trios in D major and a second in E flat trio, Opus 63.

According to Beethoven scholar James F. Green, the main work on the program is an arrangement Beethoven made of an early trio he had written about 1792 for violin, viola and cello. Beethoven set out to arrange it for piano, violin and cello sometime between 1800 and 1805, but completed only the first movement.

The existing manuscript in Beethoven's own hand disappeared for more than 100 years before it was rediscovered and published by German musicologist Willy Hess in 1920. And even then it attracted little notice.

"Hess published it only in a scholarly review, and it took a very long time for working musicians to learn that it even existed," said pianist George Lepauw, who will perform the work with fellow members of the Paris-based Beethoven Project Trio — violinist Sang Mee Lee and cellist Wendy Warner.

"We've been working on this for about two years," said Lepauw, who first heard about it several years ago from French Beethoven scholar Dominique Prevot. Green helped Lepauw secure the score and copied it into parts for the three instruments.

"Since only the first movement is complete, that's all we're doing," LePauw said. "But it's a 12-minute piece and it stands up very well on its own."

Unexpected find

Although lost works by other composers resurface occasionally, it's a rarity for Beethoven, Lepauw said.

"No one really knows how much [Johann Sebastian] Bach really wrote," said the 28-year-old pianist. "He left his works to two of his sons, and one of them had emotional and alcohol problems, and he lost or sold a lot of his father's manuscripts. We may be missing nearly 50 percent of what Bach wrote.

"So we expect to find new things by Bach, but we do not expect to find new things by Beethoven — especially a work as complete as this."

LePauw said the audience at Chicago's Murphy Auditorium is expected to include Princess Maria Anna of Austria, a granddaughter of the Emperor Karl, the last Hapsburg ruler of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

"Beethoven was far too proud and independent to be a court composer, but the Hapsburgs commissioned a number of important works from him," LePauw said. "And the princess is married to Prince Piotr Galitzine, whose Russian family also commissioned works from him, particularly late in his career."

For the premiere, benefactors have lent the trio a 1703 Stradivarius violin and a 1739 Guarnerius cello.

"Both of those instruments were made before Beethoven was born," Lepauw noted.

The program will conclude with Beethoven's "Archduke" trio. "It's the last piece Beethoven is known to have performed publicly," Lepauw said.