Johannes Brahms wrote his Trio in E flat, Op.40, in 1865 with a very specific instrument in mind, and although we hear the work in its version for violin, viola and piano, our understanding of the music stems from its original conception. Brahms grew up hearing his father playing the Waldhorn, meaning forest, or hunting, horn. This was an open, valveless horn which had also been used by Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart, and which Brahms himself played under his father’s supervision.

Although chromatic French horns would have been available, Brahms requested the Waldhorn for his Trio, which explains the fact that every movement is in the instrument’s native key of E flat. This is one of the last of Brahms’s early chamber works, in which he seems to recollect the joys of youth, although its quality also signifies his early maturity. His choice of his father’s instrument, rather than the modern equivalent, is a telling indication of the nostalgic atmosphere which pervades the work.

Each of the four movements is linked thematically. The opening movement is unusual in Brahms’s output: virtually every one of his major works opens with a movement in sonata form, except this one, which is a rondo. Brahms alternates a nostalgic theme with quick-moving, longing music. At times the texture evokes that of Brahms’s piano concertos (the first of which dates from 1858), and the instruments combine to create an almost orchestral sonority. The Scherzo’s form is also unusual (a kind of truncated sonata form), and musically this movement takes the form of a hunting song full of boisterous energy, tempered by the Trio, which is a Ländler, a type of Austrian folk dance.

The Adagio third movement is a lament in 6/8 time which quotes a folk song taught to Brahms by his mother, Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus (‘There in the Willows Stands a House’). This adds to the work’s wistful quality, and it seems likely that this mournful movement was one of several requiems composed for his mother, Christiane Brahms, who had died earlier in 1865. The minor key and chromaticism of the motifs would require stopped notes from the Waldhorn, which would consequently have sounded ‘veiled’, a timbre emulated by the violin in this arrangement. In the ebullient finale, which again evokes the hunt, sparkling piano-writing and quick-fire exchanges between the instruments return the work to its celebration of youthful exuberance. The work later inspired a tribute from György Ligeti in the form of his Horn Trio of 1982.

Max Bruch was an exact contemporary of Brahms and existed in his shadow; this, and his reluctance to embrace the innovations pioneered by Wagner, rather stifled his career. Bruch’s status rests largely on a ‘one-hit wonder’, his Violin Concerto No.1 and, to a lesser extent, the Scottish Fantasy, and while the fame of these works is understandable, the neglect of much of the rest of his output seems unjust when there is much to recommend it.

Bruch’s Eight Pieces, Op.83, were written for the mellow timbres of viola, clarinet and piano. We hear the version for violin, viola and piano, a combination which sheds new light on the original material. Bruch felt a particular affinity for the violin, arguing that it “can sing a melody better than a piano, and melody is the soul of music”, and he was friends with a number of virtuoso violinists, including Joseph Joachim, Pablo Sarasate, Ferdinand David and Willy Hess, musicians who advised him during the composition of nine major works for violin and orchestra. Bruch composed this chamber work when he was 70; his age and the fact that his own brand of Romanticism was being surpassed by more forward-looking techniques must have influenced the nostalgic tone of the pieces. They are character pieces in nature, although there are no descriptive titles. All but one, the seventh, is in a minor key, accentuating the overriding sense of introspection. The pieces were published in Berlin in 1910.

The set opens with an Andante in which the piano is a constant presence, whereas the violin and viola alternate and rarely overlap, passing between them a melody reminiscent of Schumann. The second piece, with its ominous, simmering piano writing, is more in keeping with late Brahms, and the third is the most expansive of the set, with both violin and viola enjoying extended melodies. The violin is outgoing and spontaneous, the viola more reticent and lyrical, and the piece culminates in all three instruments coming together during the final section. No.4, marked Allegro agitato, brings respite in the form of some genial exchanges, and the fifth piece draws upon Romanian folk music, the viola’s melody answered by a soulful theme played by the violin with contrapuntal decoration from the viola. Bruch returns to the soundworld of late Brahms in the nocturnal sixth piece, in which the three instruments are more intimately woven together than before, whereas Mendelssohn’s Italianate style seems to infuse the sunnier seventh, the only major-key piece in the set. The muted tone of the opening returns for the final piece; its latent passion is never quite allowed to blossom fully, but is governed by a restraint that leads, inevitably, to silence.

Franz Schubert was both exceptionally prolific and astonishingly consistent in the quality of his output, one consequence of which was that he wrote a number of partially-completed works of such beauty that they are regularly performed as stand-alone pieces. These include the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony No.8, D.759, the Quartettsatz (“quartet movement”, D.703) and this single movement for piano trio, known as the Notturno, a title coined by its first publisher rather than by Schubert himself.

The movement, originally for violin, cello and piano, may at first have been intended for Schubert’s Piano Trio No.1, D.898, written during 1827 and completed in 1828 – the last year of Schubert’s life. The Notturno was finished in the autumn of 1827, so the timing is right, although it seems scarcely plausible that Schubert would reject the movement for use in a large-scale work. Indeed, the Notturnoseems to foreshadow the Adagio of Schubert’s last chamber work, the String Quintet in C major, D.956.

The “nocturnal” nature of this movement stems from its hushed, long-breathed melody, which reveals itself slowly in close harmony between violin and viola, punctuated by the harp-like piano part. The roles are then reversed, the piano taking up the melody while the strings play pizzicato.

The central section features one of Schubert’s characteristically deft key-changes, in this case from E-flat major to the bright key of E major, just a semitone apart. The central section is briefly alluded to again in the coda, and the piece draws to a close in an exquisitely carefree mood, the piano’s trilling motif recalling a similar gesture used in the earlier ‘Trout’ Quintet.

© Joanna Wyld, 2019