Brahms: Piano Trio No. 3 / Trio In A Major

Description

Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897)Piano Trios Vol. 2Piano Trio No.3 in C Minor, Op. 101Piano Trio in A Major, Op. posth. Johannes Brahms was born on 7th May 1833 in the Gangevierteldistrict of Hamburg, the son of a double-bass player and his wife, a seamstressseventeen years her husband's senior. It was intended that the boy shouldfollow his father's trade and to this end he was taught the violin and cello,but his interest in the piano prevailed, enabling him to supplement the familyincome by playing in dockside taverns, while taking valuable lessons from EduardMarxsen. In 1853 Brahms embarked on a concert tour with theHungarian violinist EduardRemenyi, during the course of which he visited Liszt in Weimar,to no effect, and struck up a friendship with the violinist Joseph Joachim,through whose agency he met the Schumanns, established now in Dusseldorf. Theconnection was an important one. Schumann was impressed enough by thecompositions of his ownBrahms played to him to hail him as the long-awaitedsuccessor to Beethoven.Schumann's subsequent break-down in February 1854 andensuing insanity brought Brahms back to Dusseldorf to help Clara Schumann andher young family. The relationship with Clara Schumann, one of the mostdistinguished pianists of the time, lasted until her death in 1896. It was not until 1862, after a happy period that hadbrought him a temporary position at the court of Detmold as a conductor andpiano teacher, that Brahms visited Vienna, giving concerts there and meetingthe important critic EduardHanslick, who was to prove a doughty champion, pittingBrahms against Wagner andLiszt as a composer of abstract music, as opposed to themusic-drama of Wagner and the symphonic poems of Liszt, with theirextra-musical associations. Brahms finally took up permanent residence in Viennain 1869, greeted by many as the real successor to Beethoven, particularly afterhis first symphony, and winning a similar position in popular esteem andsimilar tolerance for his notorious lack of tact. He died in 1897. Summer holidays away from Vienna afforded Brahms a chanceto compose in pleasant surroundings without the interruptions inevitable in thecity. In 1886 he spent the summer in Switzerland at Hofstetten, near Thun,where he rented a villa overlooking the lake. Here he wrote his second violinsonata and second cello sonata, and in the same summer his third piano trio,the Trio in C minor, Opus 101. It was performed in Vienna in December by thecomposer, with the violinist Hubay and the cellist Popper. The first movementopens with strong energy, its intense principal subject followed by asubsidiary theme of equal intensity, marked Forte ma cantando, with violin andcello singing the theme together. The development combines both subjects,moving, in its course, to the unexpected key of C sharp minor and followed by asuccinct recapitulation and coda. The violin and cello are muted as the Scherzoopens, with a central Trio section in F minor, where agita