This album is included in the following sets:
This set contains the following albums:
- Producer's Note
- Full Track Listing
- Cover Art
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.
Andrew Rose
FOURNIER, JANIGRO & BADURA-SKODA Brahms: Piano Trio No. 1 (1953)
BRAHMS Piano Trio No. 1 in B, Op. 8
1. I. Allegro con brio (10:35)
2. II. Scherzo — Allegro molto — Trio — Meno allegro (6:26)
3. III. Adagio (9:27)
4. IV. Finale — Allegro (6:55)
Jean Fournier, violin
Antonio Janigro, cello
Paul Badura-Skoda, piano
Recorded in 1953, issued as Westminster XWN 18450
Duration: 33'23"
