Trio for piano, horn and violin in E-flat Op.40

Time changes everything for better or for worse, no, not changes, but shapes and unfolds. And so, after this unhappy year, it will only be later on that I lose and miss my good and dear mother more and more. I do not want to write of how much consolation was actually an aspect of our loss, how it ended a relationship that could only have grown ever more troubled. Brahms to Clara Schumann February 1865Brahms’ mother was fourteen years older than his father and from the early eighteen sixties his father, now a successful musician thanks to his son’s influence, increasingly resented looking after his invalid wife. But Brahms was deeply attached to her and when he became successful his first thought had always been to care for her.  Her death of a stroke at the age of 76 in January 1865 was a great blow to him.  The cellist Josef Gansbacher, calling on him unawares, tells of finding Brahms practising Bach. The composer related his loss with tears pouring down his cheeks, but never stopped his playing. He wrote the Trio that summer in Lichtental near Baden-Baden during his regular summer working vacation. His other major work that year was his Deutsches Requiem; both works written in memory of his mother.Though this work is normally played on a French valved horn, Brahms actually asks for the open, valveless Waldhorn. He had grown up hearing his father play that instrument and, with his father’s coaching, had tried it himself in childhood; so it was hardly surprising that he chose this combination of instruments to bid his mother farewell. A valveless horn has to be stopped in order to change the pitch and this mutes the instrument’s normally bright sound. Brahms wanted both qualities, the particular tone of the valveless horn on its open notes and the veiled quality of the stopped notes. The skill of modern horn players is such that this effect can be recreated on the valved horn.The opening idea is a long and hauntingly vocal 2/4 melody first given in the violin with the simplest of accompaniments.  The movement is in extended song form, A-B-A-B-A, in marked contrast to his usual highly sophisticated first movements.  The second idea is faster, pocu piu animata, in 9/8 metre and in C minor. The mood tautens and intensifies in the return of both ideas.  There is an abrupt change of mood for the second movement in galloping 3/4 time, where the horn’s hunting associations are shamelessly exploited.  The form, however, is his highly developed sonata–scherzo that had been a speciality of his since his earliest compositions.  The Trio in A flat minor is another sad song, reminiscent of the opening movement, which rises to a brief impassioned climax before fading back to the main scherzo.The Adagio mesto stands at the emotional centre of the work.  The consolatory berceuse rhythm contrasts with the deep sadness of the horn’s lament.  The solo horn introduces a second idea that is developed with the violin over an ethereal accompaniment in the piano, and is finally given to the solo violin marked ppp quasi niente, a moment of total despair. In another valedictory move, Brahms interrupts the reprise with a slow tempo quotation of the folk song Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus, a song his mother taught him. The movement concludes with a climactic fortissimo outburst of the opening theme, before gently dying away.  The con brio mood of the finale owes much to Haydn, a last dance to make up for grief-burdened adagio. The overall impression of wild energy is still tempered by moments of uncertainty and loss and though Brahms goes for the applause at the end, you think back to the sorrow and wonder how such a brave face can be composed.