Johannes Brahms - Piano Trio no. 2 in C major, op. 87 (Manuscript Score)

Performers: Van Baerle Trio (Hannes Minnaar, Maria Milstein, Gideon den Herder) YouTube Link:    • Brahms: Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 87 - Van Bae...   Photo: Brahms, ca. 1883 0:00 - I. Allegro 8:45 - II. Andante con moto 16:34 - III. Scherzo: Presto 21:14 - IV. Finale: Allegro giocoso The piano trio is a genre with which Brahms had a strange history. Before he published his second official standard piano trio, he had already composed all three piano quartets, all three string quartets, his choral works with orchestra (except the last), the first two symphonies, and three of his four concertos. The C major piano trio is thus a work of the highest maturity, emerging from the milieu of the Third Symphony. In June 1880, Brahms began work simultaneously on two new piano trios—one in C major, the other in E flat major. He completed the opening movement of each and showed them to some of his closest friends and advisers. Despite the fact that Clara Schumann declared a preference for the E flat major piece, the self-critical Brahms abandoned and eventually destroyed it. Two years later, however, he took up the Piano Trio in C major again and completed it with the addition of three further movements. When offering it for publication as his Op. 87 in December 1882, he was uncharacteristically effusive in his assessment, writing to his publisher Simrock: “you have not so far had such a beautiful trio from me and very probably have not published one to match it in the last ten years.” It is a work that is rich with strong content but is never unrestrained or undisciplined. Surprisingly, other than his very first published work, the First Piano Sonata, this is his only multi-movement work with a key center of C major. The two string instruments are frequently treated as a single unit; indeed, all four movements begin with the violin and cello playing together in octaves. The opening Allegro contains an unusual wealth of thematic material: an imperious first subject exuding confidence and vitality; a shadowy, chromatic second subject (Clara Schumann found this too introverted—she would, she told Brahms, have preferred him to use longer notes); a further smooth idea; and a gracious closing theme in dotted rhythm. These themes are very ripe for development, and the most impressive moment is near the center, where the main theme is given in a waltz-like variant in the distant key of D flat major. There is also a substantial coda in which a sweeping augmented version of the main theme makes a splendid return. The slow movement is a set of variations on a noble, melancholy theme in A minor. The theme itself, with its characteristic ‘Scotch snap’ rhythm, shows Brahms’s continued fascination with the Hungarian gypsy style. It has the unusual structure of an eight-measure section followed by one of nineteen measures (divided into a twelve-bar main portion and a seven-measure codetta). This structure is maintained for all five variations, except for an expansion of the codetta in the last one, which transforms into a smooth, expansive major-key melody of great beauty. The Scherzo is short but complex, like a compressed version of the developmental scherzo movements he wrote for his earlier piano quartets. It is a mysterious, spectral minor-key piece whose predominant dynamic marking is pianissimo, balanced by the C major confidence of a very warm, soaring melody in the brief trio section. The finale is an exuberant, good-humoured sonata-rondo. The opening of its main theme features a distinctive F sharp, a tritone above the keynote C, which bears a striking resemblance to the theme from The Simpsons, first heard a little over a hundred years later! Much play is made of the staccato repeated-note figure with which the piano accompanies this opening. Despite an unusually drawn-out re-transition and a huge coda—where the theme reappears in a subdued augmented form mirroring the opening movement—the finale is short, in line with Brahms’s tendency toward tightly argued finales in his later chamber works. Adapted from descriptions by Misha Donat © 1998 (https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc...) and Kelly Dean Hansen, 2024 (http://www.kellydeanhansen.com/opus87.... Disclaimer: I do not own the audio or scores in this video; all rights belong to the original artists and publishers. This video is created strictly for educational purposes to help fellow music lovers study Brahms's masterworks. If you are the copyright owner and wish to have a recording removed, please contact me via the email in the channel's About section.