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Artist: Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax

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Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax:

Hope Amid Tears

On Friday, June 4, Yo-Yo Ma and long-time friend and musical partner Emanuel Ax released Hope Amid Tears, a new recording of Beethoven's complete works for cello and piano, on Sony Classical. Available now for preorder, Hope Amid Tears presents Beethoven's five sonatas for cello and piano in the order in which they were composed, tracing an important arc in Beethoven's development and approach as a composer. Joining them are Beethoven's three sets of variations for cello and piano.

The title is an allusion to the possibly apocryphal story that, in 1809, Beethoven sent a copy of the recently-completed Sonata No. 3 to his friend Ignaz von Gleichenstein with the note "Inter lacrimas et luctum"-"amid tears and grief." At the time, Vienna was embroiled in the chaos of the Napoleonic Wars, and many of Beethoven's closest friends and supporters had fled the city. But in this period of loneliness and isolation, compounded by his increasingly profound deafness, Beethoven nonetheless completed works of enduring spirit.