This album is included in the following sets:
This set contains the following albums:
- Producer's Note
- Full Track Listing
- Cover Art
Fournier, Janigro and Badura-Skoda play Brahms
Westminster classical LP recording remastered for finest sound quality
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
BRAHMS Piano Trio No. 1 in B, Op. 8
Jean Fournier, violin
Antonio Janigro, cello
Paul Badura-Skoda, piano
Recorded in 1953, issued as Westminster XWN 18450
Duration: 33'23"
