Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 07/16/2015, uploaded on 12/24/2015

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Johannes Brahms began work on his Piano Trio No. 1 in B major in 1854, an ambitious work set out on a grand scale—indeed, too grand for the youthful 21-year-old composer. It was not his first essay in the genre, as there is evidence earlier Trios preceded it, yet it is the first to have survived the composer’s self-critical judgment. In 1884, Brahms’s publisher, Simrock, acquired the rights to his early works published by Breitkopf  & Härtal, which included the First Piano Trio. Before reprinting these early works, Simrock offered Brahms the chance to revise any of the works he no longer liked. Though he entertained the idea of reworking the F minor Piano Sonata, he eventually decided to leave all the works untouched—all except for the Piano Trio. During the summer of 1889, thirty-five years after its composition, Brahms worked on the revisions of the B major Trio. The final product, however, can hardly be called a “reworking” of the original but instead amounted to an entirely new composition. Brahms, himself, even recognized this fact and suggested to Simrock that both versions be advertised next to each other. However, even though Brahms wished that the two versions would stand equally as artistic works in their own rights, posterity has led nearly to the complete neglect of the original 1854 version and, today, it is the 1889 version that is most often heard in performances.

The Allegro con brio first movement opens with a radiant and lyrical theme in B major that virtually remained unchanged between the two versions. However, the similarities between the two end at the closing of the first theme. The G-sharp minor second subject of the 1854 version was abandoned for an altogether different thematic idea in the 1889 version. With such a major change in the exposition of the movement’s sonata form, the development and recapitulation were consequently, and obviously, rewritten. With this recomposition of the first movement, Brahms’s strong sense of structure and balance led to much more economical opening sonata form and, one might even say thankfully, to the removal of the awkward fugue that stood at the end of the 1854 movement.

The following Scherzo in B minor was actually the only original movement to make it into the later work virtually untouched. Subtle modifications of phrasing and register were made throughout the movement and the only major revision was a new coda. In essence, the strikingly few changes made are an indicator of the mastery Brahms had achieved early in his career over the Beethovenian form.

Like the first movement, the Adagio benefited from a contraction and simplification of its form with the original 1854 episodic movement restructured into a modest ternary design. The piano opens the movement with a gentle chorale-like tune and then engages in a musical dialogue with the violin and viola. In place of the E major melody that originally followed this opening theme is instead a central episode in G-sharp minor. An embellished reprise of the first theme followed by a coda concludes the movement.

The finale also underwent substantial changes equal to those of the first movement. Here again, the first theme remains largely intact while an entirely new melody serves as the second subject of the movement’s sonata form. One of the few examples of a multi-movement composition in a major key ending in the minor, the finale abandons the lyricism of the previous movement for a determined resolve bordering on defiance. Though the second theme returns in the key of B major during the recapitulation, the movement nevertheless concludes with a dramatic and fiercely driven coda in B minor.      Joseph DuBose

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.