Brahms Horn Trio on period instruments. Faust, Van der Zwart, Melnikov

[@waggishsagacity7947]

This is a truly beautiful & touching performance! Not only is there a difference between the timbre of modern horns and natural horns, but even more so, between modern pianos and a period piano. Personally, I think that the elegiac mood of the piece (which Brahms wrote right after his mother's death) comes through better with the darker, less brassy sound of the natural horn. It's a moody piece, but certainly not funereal. After the deeply wistful, almost sad, third movement, the 4th with its fast rhythm and more staccato feel sounds like a ray of hope, not jolly, but uplifting. A wonderful rendition. Thanks.

[@adambomb30]

Excellent performance and that Bösendorfer sounds great!

[@scius327]

I'm forever grateful for such gorgeous music - my god, even his chamber music sounds like a symphony!

[@chrisingres6221]

man, i'm a chamber music addict since the age of ten. this truly is one of the very best chamber music renditions i EVER listened to. the colors of the natural horn are incredibly beautiful, what a loss of possibilities on a modern instrument. the third movement is just breathtaking, it's like i listen to this music the first time.

[@roycezaro1998]

I prefer the sound of a natural horn. It's truly unique

[@Quotenwagnerianer]

Brahms felt the same.

[@stephenmalinowski]

Same for me; I'd played this piece several times (playing the piano part in a trio) and listened to several recordings before hearing this one, and it was a revelation.

[@musodave]

Listening to this version is like a breath of fresh air. I love the lighter piano sound and the way the instruments blend overall, allowing the details to come through more clearly. Great performance all round.

[@michaels7889]

So beautiful! Much more pleasing than the viola version!

[@LongshanMusic]

the best recording of the BHT I've ever heard, by a million light years.

[@SteveTjoa]

Great balance. The horn is too quiet in other recordings. Also love the tempo in the 4th movement.

[@josephlaredo5272]

This piece simply HAS to have the stopped notes in the slow movement, especially the one at 22.25, and Zwart is spot on with his playing, but why on earth don't valved horn players put these in? There's nothing to stop them. It's like a pianist playing without ever using the una corda pedal or a violinst without ever playing sul ponticello; it's part of the expressive "armoury" of the instrument. Here I find the piano rather clattery, especially in the second movement, but the finale is exhilarating (the only performance other than the Ashkenazy/Perlman/Tuckwell version that takes it at the speed it needs to go). Bravo. Thanks for posting.

[@dirkmichiel6694]

heard the slow and last movements on the radio, and was struck by the healthy and direct manner, and a sense of perfect rightness, which Brahms generally tends to impose on most musicians, leaving perhaps less leeway to other 'interpretations', but then, what else could we desire? Since this is my favorite movement, the slow one, of all, I thank you!

[@y.u.r.i7452]

Fantastic playing. The best ; i adore all of your tones, and the unified is awe-inspired

[@msotil]

That horn must be fiendishly difficult to play, and to play like that boggles my mind.

[@mikelisacarb]

Masterfully written to accentuate the colors of a natural horn. In order to turn these liabilities into assets, Brahms had to come up with melodies that made the stopped notes features instead of glitches. His father was a natural horn player in the militia. Undoubtably, he heard horn being played at home during his childhood. Perhaps that's how little Johannes learned to hear such perfect horn lines!

[@fritzpoppenberg3921]

He played the horn himself as a boy

[@srothbardt]

Great playing. Listen to the Danish Horn Trio version, too.

[@antoniusaetneus855]

Really GREAT!

[@coenraetjansen2550]

Bravo Teunis!!

[@AgricolaSuperbus]

Overall really nice coordination and clear sound. I was listening to the Perlman, Barenboim, Clevenger version before and found it to be quite messy.

[@remsan03]

What a lovely Still Life with Horn. Who's the artist, I wonder...

[@Muzikay]

Jean-Georges Hirn, _Nature morte au cor de chasse_ (1827).

[@remsan03]

Thank you. Haven't heard a lot about him but he's good.

[@gorgiasromero4647]

Not for nothing Brahms preferred and LOVED the natural horn

[@adamchan6296]

the Gilels version is fantastic

[@robertberger4203]

Interesting, yes . But not as far as I am concerned , "better" than those on modern instruments . And I'm not even sure as to how "authentic" it is, as I've always been skeptical of how authentic any period instrument performance is . When you hear a period instrument performance, live or recorded , yo;'re hearing what it MIGHT have sounded like in the past, not necessarily exactly what is sounded like in the past . By the time the horn trio was written, the valved horn was already the norm in orchestras , and natural horns were going out of use .

[@Muzikay]

+Robert Berger True, but Brahms was very much a conservative, and wrote the piece (as well as his orchestral music) with the natural horn in mind. And the whole point of the so-called "authentic" approach is not necessarily to play the music "the way it was", which is both futile and pointless, but to see how playing the music on the instruments for which it was written (and with the older technique etc.) can benefit the music - improve the balnce, allow for transparency, make the phrasing more dramatic or lyrical etc.

[@robertberger4203]

Yes, as a former horn player myself, I know all this about Brahms and the horn. But I don't think that period instruments allow for "more dramatic or lyrical phrasing " , whatever that is . In fact, too many of them so far ,by numerals all, have done just the opposite . They have thrown the baby out with the bathwater . This recording is quite good as a performance, but in no way better than the ones using modern instruments . It's certainly worth hearing , though . But would Brahms have disliked the deservedly famous recording with Barry Tuckwell, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Itzhak Perlman ? I doubt it .

[@Muzikay]

Robert Berger I had that recording growing up (with Franck's violin sonata). Too sentimental for my liking, but à chacun son gout...

[@brbrofsvl]

It's not just in the phrasing, but in the timbre range with the stopped notes. Brahms, like Beethoven before him, was one of the few composers who wrote FOR the natural horn rather than in spite of it. A lot of the harmony in this piece and also his symphonies emerges from the timbral constraints imposed by the instrument. You can hear what I'm talking about especially clearly in the finale of his third symphony as recorded by Gardiner; there are points where the horns play sharply stopped pitches that were clearly planned as points of arrival. I'm convinced now that when Mahler does the same thing with stopped horn, he's often making reference to this kind of natural-horn writing, and not just using it as a special effect.

[@robertberger4203]

In the natural horn era, stopped notes were not considered "extra color ". Their purpose was to enable the player to play pitches outside the natural harmonic series, and thus enable composers to write more interesting melodic lines . The great hand horn virtuosos of the late 18th and early 19th century were admired for their ability to DISGUISE the difference between topped and open notes so that listeners could hardly tell the difference . But Brahms was born in 1833, when valved horns were just starting to be used .