Horn Trio, Op.40 - Brahms 'Becker - Horn • Lipare - Violin • Auler - Piano'

Composition Year: 1865
First Performance: 1865-11-28 in Zürich, Großer Saal des Kasinos Johannes Brahms (piano), Friedrich Hegar (violin), Gläss (horn) Zweite Quartett-Soiree des Orchestervereins
Performers:
Lauren Becker - Horn • Blagomira Lipari - Violin • Rob Auler - Piano
Recorded: LaVeck Concert Series, May 16, 2015
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00:01 1. Andante
07:50 2. Scherzo. Allegro
15:17 3. Adagio mesto
22:48 4. Finale. Allegro con brio
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Work:
The Horn Trio in E♭ major, Op. 40, by Johannes Brahms is a chamber piece in four movements written for natural horn, violin, and piano. Composed in 1865, the work commemorates the death of Brahms's mother, Christiane, earlier that year. However, it draws on a theme which Brahms had composed twelve years previously but did not publish at the time.
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The work was first performed in Zürich on November 28, 1865, and was published a year later in November 1866. The Horn Trio was the last chamber piece Brahms wrote for the next eight years.
Brahms chose to write the work for natural horn rather than valve horn, despite the fact that the valve horn was becoming more common. The timbre of the natural horn is more somber and melancholic than the valve horn and creates a much different mood. Brahms himself believed that the open tones of the natural horn had a fuller quality than those produced by valves. Nineteenth-century listeners associated the sound of the natural horn with nature and the calls of the hunt. Fittingly, Brahms once said that the opening theme of the first movement came to him while he was walking through the woods. Brahms also learned natural horn (as well as piano and cello) as a child, which may be another reason why he chose to write for these instruments following the death of his mother.
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Notwithstanding Brahms's love for the sound of the natural horn, he did specify that the horn part could be played by a cello, and it was indeed published with a transposed cello part. Much later in 1884 Brahms also reworked the part for viola.
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Wikipedia's biography: https://bit.ly/3kbFPC0
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ATTRIBUTION
Music contained in this video is licensed under: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0