Horn Trio in E‑Flat Major

The combination of the commanding horn, the sonorous grandeur of the piano and the delicate, intimate solo violin seems a recipe for acoustic disaster. But Brahms handles the balance between these very instruments so expertly and imaginatively that the three voices are able to converse as equals, and the result is one of his most glorious chamber works. The Horn Trio (1865) is full of the spirit of German Romanticism: exuberant hunting and dancing rhythms dominate the fast second and fourth movements, but the piece also explores more shadowy woodland territory in the songlike opening “Andante”, whose theme Brahms said came to him during a solitary forest walk. The heart of the Horn Trio, however, is the dark, troubled “Adagio mesto” third movement (mesto means “sad” or “mournful”). Unlike his mentor Robert Schumann, Brahms was rarely emotionally specific in his tempo markings. But this is clearly a profound lament, almost certainly composed as a memorial to Brahms’ mother, who had died only a few months earlier, and with whom Brahms had an intense but complicated relationship. As in all Brahms’ great chamber works, the public mask is off, and we encounter the real, acutely sensitive private heart. But the joy, the exuberance are real too: as so often, the presence of death heightens our sense of the beauty of life.