Before Ludwig van Beethoven composed his 16 string quartets — considered by musicians and composers alike as among the greatest pieces of music ever written — he wrote five string trios. This was in the late 1790s, a time musicologists call the composer’s early period. The trios are performed comparatively less often but not because they’re somehow jejune.
Instead, according to violinist Soovin Kim, “The trios are no less inventive [or] beautiful than the quartets but much more difficult to play.” Kim is on faculty at New England Conservatory and Yale School of Music and founded the summertime Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Colchester.
“One simple reason is he’s basically trying to write string quartets with only three players, so often a musician is playing two notes at a time,” Kim continued. “So everyone is very busy.”
Kim and two equally distinguished colleagues will perform all five string trios — a particularly rare occurrence — at two off-season Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival concerts this weekend. Joining him are violist Jessica Bodner, a member of Harvard University’s quartet in residence, the Parker, and on faculty there; and acclaimed cellist Marcy Rosen. The latter teaches at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and, like Kim, serves as artistic director of several festivals and concert series.
Kim, Bodner and Rosen already have one Beethoven trio in their repertoire: They performed String Trio in G Major, Op. 9, No. 1 at the 2021 festival to a small, socially distanced crowd. That’s when they discovered they had “an amazing chemistry,” as Kim put it, and the idea for a cycle was hatched.
It takes time to prepare such a performance, however. The three musicians have rehearsed together four to six hours a day for 10 days straight — an order of magnitude above rehearsal time for summertime concerts. And while Kim has performed all five trios before — back in 2000, with a trio that included late violist Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet — the others have not.
The first concert will feature Serenade in D Major, Op. 8 — a work for violin, viola and cello but without the larger musical structures that define the trios. The serenade includes six discrete movements, ranging from jaunty marches to dances such as the minuet and polonaise. That “fun” piece, as Kim described it, contrasts with the other half of the program, String Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 3, another six-movement work that was inspired by Mozart’s sole string trio, written six years before.
The second concert covers the string trios of Op. 9: in G Major, No. 1; in C Major, No. 2; and in C Minor, No. 3. The first, in G Major, will actually be performed last to showcase its fast-paced, virtuosic finale.
“The last movement is a barn burner,” Kim said. “It’s a great way to end.”
Beethoven wrote all five string trios in his mid-twenties in a span of four years, and he never wrote another.
That’s one reason to go hear them as a group; another is that the composer’s penchant for breaking rules is already evident in these early pieces.
But “the simplest reason is that [Beethoven] is so easy to enjoy,” the violinist said. “Some music — like Ravel, even Mozart — is not going to appeal to people who are seeking out a visceral, rock-music experience. It’s too refined and subtle. With Beethoven, you’re getting everything: loud, hair-raisingly fast, fun, powerful, serious, meditative, thrilling.
“That’s why Beethoven has lasted,” he added. “It just never gets old.”
Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival: Beethoven String Trios, Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Burlington, Part 1: Friday, January 9, 7:30 p.m.; Part 2: Sunday, January 11, 4 p.m. $49; $25 for people under 30 and music educators; $5 for students.
This article appears in January 7 • 2026.
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