Johanes Brahms HORN TRIO IN Eb Op. 40 played by Jay Ferree (natural horn), Dan Auerbach (violin), & Joshua Pierce (piano) in Vallotti tuning - Andante - poco piu animato – tempo I – poco piu animato – tempo I
Concert: #115
Date: April 26, 2008
Place: Church of the Epiphany
Second Avenue & East 22nd Street, NYC
lyrics
Johannes Brahms composed the HORN TRIO in the spring of 1865. An elegiac mood pervades much of the work. The opening movement is marked Andante. Furthermore, the third movement uses the term mesto, and includes a quotation from “Wer nur den lieben gott lasst walten,” an old German funeral chorale (also used by Bach in his funerary cantata of the same title, BWV 93). It may be that Brahms intended this Trio to serve as a requiem for his mother, as he composed it shortly after her death. There are other aspects to the work as well; the hunt scenes in the finale, and the vigor of the scherzo. The elegiac mood reasserts itself in the trio section of the scherzo. Brahms wrote the horn part for the natural valve-less horn (by then already obsolete). This horn is very difficult to play, since those notes that do not fall into the basic overtone series have to be stopped by hand. That Brahms wrote a virtuosic horn part, on par with the violin, does not make it any easier. The horn used for this trio is usually the modern valve horn, but here it is played on the intended natural horn. The Horn Trio is unique among Brahms’s works, apart from the unusual instrumentation, as it is the only one of his instrumental works which does not employ sonata-allegro form. The form chosen by Brahms instead is comprised of motivic interrelation among the movements, as well as simpler forms.
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