The Piano Trio in B flat major, op. 97, Beethoven's last complete piano trio, could hardly be more different from the F minor String Quartet, even though sketches for the two works appear in consecutive sketchbooks. In contrast to the personal traumas and tensions expressed in the Quartetto serioso, the Archduke Trio is unhurried, spacious and noble; an Olympian work unconcerned with the day-to-day cares of ordinary mortals. It has its enigmatic moments, especially in the last two movements, but there are plenty of enigmas, no doubt, on Mount Olympus too.

An early autograph dated 3 March – 20 March 1811 suggests that Beethoven may have composed the Archduke in a little over three weeks, though modern scholars disagree over the dates of the manuscript. It was played informally for the first time at Baron Neuworth's house two days after Beethoven finished it, but he then set it aside, as he often did with new compositions. The first public performance of the Trio, perhaps in revised form, was given by Schuppanzigh, Linke and Beethoven himself at a charity concert on 11 April 1814, in the hall of the Hotel Zum Römischen Kaiser, and it was repeated a few days later. Both were bittersweet occasions, because it was clear to all who were present in the hall, including the composer Louis Spohr and the pianist Ignaz Moscheles, that although Beethoven was demonstrably at the height of his powers as a composer, his hearing was now so seriously impaired that he would have to give up performing in public.

The poignancy of the occasion was all the greater because Beethoven had created in the last of his piano trios a new world of sound, almost symphonic in weight and texture, pointing forward to the rich tone colours of nineteenth-century Romanticism, sounds which by then he himself could imagine, but hear only partially. ‘The densely sonorous textures are perhaps the most remarkable feature’ writes Nigel Fortune. ‘Beethoven uses the developing resources of the most up-to-date pianos of his day – indeed, causes the makers to keep up with him – and increases the sound of the stringed instruments in order to match the piano; one feels the developments in instrument manufacture, instrumental technique and Beethoven's art to be indivisible.’