Brahms: Piano Trios 1-3, Clarinet Trio & Horn Trio

Featuring

Anthony Marwood
Richard Lester
Susan Tomes
Stephen Stirling
Richard Hosford
The Florestan Trio

Johannes Brahms

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Composer Biography

Brahms had a lifelong fondness for the horn, having played it in his youth, and preferred the rounded tone of the natural horn (Waldhorn) over valve horns.

Composition History

Brahms destroyed an early Piano Trio in E flat major, despite Clara Schumann's preference for it, before completing his Piano Trio in C major, Op. 87.

Compositional Technique

Brahms's late music, including the A minor Trio, Op. 114, often features chains of descending thirds, which are described as a potent symbol of resignation.

Composer Biography

Johannes Brahms was in his early twenties when he composed his Trio in B major, Op. 8, the first of his conventionally scored piano trios.

Compositional Technique

The Horn Trio, Op. 40, is unique among Brahms's chamber works for not beginning with a sonata-form movement, instead alternating two ideas in rondo fashion.

Composition History

Brahms thoroughly revised his Trio in B major, Op. 8, thirty-five years after its original publication, even telling Clara Schumann that he could now call it Op. 108 instead of Op. 8.

Composition History

The A minor Trio, Op. 114, and Clarinet Quintet in B minor were composed by Brahms in rapid succession in 1891, inspired by the playing of clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld.