Andante
Scherzo (Allegro)
Adagio mesto
Allegro con brio 

Composed in May 1865 at Baden-Baden, Brahms’s Trio was written for piano, violin and natural horn. It was first performed on 28 November 1865 at a concert in Zurich, with Brahms at the piano, the violinist Friedrich Hegar and a horn-player called Mr. Gläss. It was – and remains – an extremely unusual instrumental combination, and Brahms adapts the sonata form of the first movement to the exigencies of the natural horn (without too many excursions into remote keys), evoking a mood that seems to capture something of the shadowy romantic forests that surrounded Brahms in Baden-Baden when he wrote the piece. The second movement exploits the ‘hunting’ characteristic of the horn to memorable effect, with a darker contrasting section in the unusual key of A flat minor. The Trio is at its most personal in the slow movement, with its rare marking of mesto (sad, or melancholy). Brahms’s mother had died three months before he composed this piece, and it is easy to hear this heartfelt movement as a lament for her. Just before the end, the horn, then the violin, play a melody that is a premonition of the main theme of the finale. The finale itself is a bucolic delight, galloping to a joyful conclusion.  

Nigel Simeone © 2014