Jean
Fournier, violin
Antonio Janigro, cello
Paul Badura-Skoda, piano
Recorded
in 1953, issued as Westminster XWN 18450
Download ID: 230954, 434950
(Duration:
33'23")
Play
sample movement:
With their
reading of Brahms' wonderful Piano Trio in B, once again Fournier, Janigro
and Badura-Skoda show what a wonderful ensemble they were. We already
have a number of their 1950's Westminster recordings in our catalogue,
all wonderfully restored by Peter Harrison, and this is most surely a
worthy addition.
Brahms
completed this Trio at the age of just twenty-one, and poured into it
all the exhuberance of youth. Yet what we hear now is that exuberance
married to the experience of a long and highly successful life in music,
as the work was substantially revised - indeed "recomposed"
- in 1889, some 35 years later.
This tightening
up stripped quite a substantial amount out of the original, whilst managing
to maintain the youthfulness of the original, and it is the later version
that is most often heard and recorded. Whether or not this is a good thing
was questionable even at the time - Brahms wrote to his publisher "I
must categorically state that the old one is bad, but I do not maintain
that the new one is good."
Well far
be it from me to question the great composer on this point, suffice to
say that it remains one of my favourite pieces of chamber music, and this
fabulous recorded version is well worth hearing.
