Description
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8 – First version (1854)
IV. Finale: Allegro molto
Piano: Maria Sofianska
Violin: Katharina von Behren
Double bass: Božo Paradžik
This recording presents the final movement from the original version of the Trio, composed in 1854. The remaining movements will follow in the coming days. The powerful final movement is a particularly exhilarating and emotionally intense conclusion to this extraordinary work.
Together with the pianist Maria Sofianska and the exceptionally gifted young violinist Katharina von Behren, who is embarking on a promising musical career, I had the great pleasure of exploring this rarely performed version of Brahms’s Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8.
Brahms substantially revised the work 35 years later, producing the version that is performed much more frequently today. The original version is therefore particularly fascinating, revealing a much more youthful and expansive conception of the work, with numerous passages that were subsequently altered or entirely rewritten.
It is worth mentioning that both Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim expressed their reservations about Brahms’s extensive revision of the Trio and found it difficult to understand why such a remarkable work had been so substantially altered. I have my own thoughts and suspicions as to why Brahms made this decision – but that would open an entirely new topic, which I will leave for another occasion.
For me, recording this work was an incredibly powerful musical experience. To play a piano trio for the first time – and a work of such extraordinary intensity and depth – was a profoundly emotional experience. There is simply nothing comparable in the double-bass repertoire: the particular combination of violin, cello and piano opens up a completely different musical world.
Interestingly, this rarely performed first version lends itself remarkably well to performance on the double bass. In this recording, I use high-C tuning (in fourths, with C as the highest string).
Double-bass parts will soon be available on my website, both in high-C tuning and in the standard solo tuning.
We would also like to express our heartfelt thanks to Qianchu Guo, herself a fantastic pianist, for turning the pages for us.