Friday September 11, 2009

Lakewood Cultural Center Performing Arts Series
Claremont Trio
Paul Schoenfield: “Andante moderato” (2nd movement) from Café Music 4:35
Johannes Brahms: Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op.8 34:45 (3/22/07)
Also, Charley anticipates the Albers Trio's appearance on the Lakewood Cultural Center Performing Arts Series.
Gregor Piatigorsky: Variations on a Paganini Theme
Julie Albers, cello; Orion Weiss, piano
Artek 22 Track 9 14:18

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Opus 8
I. Allegro con brio
II. Scherzo: Allegro molto
III. Adagio
IV. Allegro

Brahms started the B major Trio during the summer of 1853 and finished it the following January. He played it for Clara Schumann, whose opinion was mixed. ``I could only wish for another first movement,'' she said, ``as the present one does not satisfy me, although I admit that its opening is fine.'' Brahms published the work without revision in 1854, his first published chamber work. The first performance was given on November 27, 1855 in New York City by pianist William Mason, violinist Theodore Thomas and cellist Carl Bergmann.
In 1888 he confessed to Joseph Joachim that publishing it so soon after composition was a mistake. When publisher Fritz Simrock asked Brahms if he wanted to revise any of his earlier works, Brahms jumped at the chance and issued a revised version in 1891. ``I have written my B major trio once more,'' he wrote to Clara Schumann. ``It will not be so muddled up as it was--but will it be better?'' As he put it, he ``did not provide it with a wig, but just combed and arranged its hair a little.'' This was understatement; the revision is substantial.
According to Donald Francis Tovey, the revision is ``not an unmixed gain'' over the original. In the finale, he said, ``the experienced Brahms grips the young Brahms so roughly by the shoulder as to make us doubt whether a composer so angry with the sentimentalities of his own youth would not be over-ready to tease and bully, or, still worse, to ignore young composers anxious to learn but less sure of their ground.'' Brahms was the pianist at the premiere of the revision on February 22, 1890 in Vienna.
Biographer Karl Geiringer says the work ``impresses one by its youthful freshness and tenderness of conception, its soft and sensual tonality, and its rich variety of moods. Even in his later days, Brahms hardly composed anything more beautiful than the broad, swinging introductory theme of the first movemnt, the elves' dance of the Scherzo, the opening of the Adagio with its inspired religious pathos, and the Schubertian cantilena...of the Finale.''