Just the three of us

Who says you need a whole orchestra to play a symphony? Susan Tomes explains why the Florestan Trio will be going it alone when they tackle Beethoven's majestic Second for a live audience

When the credit crunch bit into the Florestan Trio's plans for our summer festival, we were forced to think creatively. In past years, we've always programmed a gala concert in Rye church, in which each member of the trio (piano, violin, cello) plays a concerto with orchestra. But disappearing grants and sponsors meant we couldn't afford to hire an orchestra. Instead, we had to take a more modest approach to our programming. Audiences are still going to get a grand orchestral work, but with a twist. We are going to perform Beethoven's Second Symphony, but in its rarely heard version for Piano Trio.

Most people are now accustomed to the idea that if you want to hear a certain piece of music, it's just a click away on your iPod, or downloadable from the internet. But of course, not so long ago, people couldn't hear music unless they played it themselves. Opportunities to hear large-scale music live were very limited - this was before the days of jet-setting orchestras and the professional concert circuit, and a new orchestral piece might be played in your town only once. So there was a thriving market in more modest arrangements of these new orchestral pieces, to enable music-lovers to tackle them at home.

Beethoven's own trio version of his Second Symphony first appeared three years after the orchestral original. As the first reviewer wrote in 1806: "It is for those who through recollection want to repeat the pleasure of the complete performance, and look over and examine more calmly whatever was not entirely clear or particularly to their liking."

Sometimes, as in this case, the composer himself made the arrangement. But, unhampered by copyright restrictions, publishers often commissioned other musicians to arrange popular works, with or without the consent of the composer. Johann Peter Salomon made delightful arrangements of Haydn's "London" Symphonies for chamber group; Chopin's Piano Concertos were published with the wind parts cued into the string parts for chamber performance. Many symphonies, such as those of Brahms, were arranged for piano duet, sometimes for piano solo. Great composers were usually very pragmatic and flexible, naturally preferring a small-scale performance to none at all, and often happily taking part in such performances themselves.

But do these chamber versions work in their own right? If I looked at Beethoven's trio version of his Second Symphony without knowing that it was originally conceived for orchestra, would I know? Why perform it today, when you can access the "proper" version at a moment's notice on countless different recordings, or hear it at any number of live performances?

There are certainly plenty of moments where Beethoven makes the piano play a fast "tremolo" of chords or arpeggios to give the impression of lots of string players all working away on their instruments like mad. Those passages don't seem quite typical of piano writing. On the other hand, he did sometimes write for the piano in this way in his later trios. In the "Ghost" Trio, written a couple of years after the Second Symphony's trio version, and in the "Archduke" Trio, he does often seem to be striving - through the same use of "trembling" chords in the piano part - to give the feeling of massed forces emanating from a single instrument. Perhaps in making the trio arrangement of his second symphony he had taught himself something new about piano writing? I know Beethoven probably composed his second symphony at the piano; he certainly played it on the piano while working out his metronome marks. Playing his trio version makes me feel close to the composer. As I attempt to thunder like the timpani, or play impossibly fast repeated notes like a violin section, I can imagine Beethoven, still a great virtuoso in 1805, throwing off these effects with reckless abandon. It's very hard to achieve that on the modern piano, but it's partly this difficulty that will, I hope, make a chamber performance of this massive work an intense experience for the audience.

There are other advantages to playing this version of the Second. Orchestral musicians may have their own views on how a work should be played, but they must submit to the conductor's authority. Most chamber musicians, however, are attracted to their field because they know their views will be instrumental in guiding the result. They like the idea of working without a conductor: holding the outcome entirely in your hands can be liberating.

Not that any of us will be working from a blank slate when we sit down to start rehearsing Beethoven's Second Symphony-cum-Trio. For a start, all three of us know it very well, either from performing it or hearing it performed. This knowledge will help us, but it might also be a hindrance. I know, for example, that it will be impossible to play the finale as fast as an orchestra plays it: the notes on a modern piano just don't repeat that quickly. And my string-playing colleagues, playing a symphony in a chamber version, suddenly find themselves wholly responsible for their line. Of course they are used to that in chamber music and solos. But this is very different from playing in an orchestral string section, where you can scarcely hear yourself, and have to become part of a mass, as in a flock of migrating birds. Beethoven's symphonies are painted on a huge canvas, and their scale is heroic. But, recast as a trio, his Second Symphony forces each player to become an individual hero, not just one of the troops.

What about the audience? How will this miniature version of a much-loved orchestral work sound to them? Will they miss the brass in the climaxes, or the woodwind solos, now transferred to other instruments? The entire symphony, half an hour long, has been faithfully transcribed for trio, note by note. Will it seem too long when played by just the three of us? Will we really sound like heroes, as we hope we do when we play Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio, or might we seem more like emperors who have suddenly had our clothes removed?

Our hope is that this sense of huge responsibility will have a galvanising effect on us and on the audience alike, so that what might seem like a rash enterprise becomes instead an exciting challenge - one that seems just right for these straitened times.

The Florestan festival at Peasmarsh, East Sussex, runs from 11-14 June. The Florestan Trio play Beethoven's Symphony No 2 in D major, arranged for piano trio, on 13 June. Details: florestantrio.com