Composed 1865; 30 minutes

When Brahms first published his E-flat Trio, he made his publisher re-engrave the title page to specify the natural horn—or Waldhorn, as he knew it—with cello (1866) or viola (1884) listed as possible alternatives. Though familiar with the modern valved horn, which had all but replaced the natural version by the time of his death, Brahms remained deeply attached to the sound of the natural horn. It was one of four instruments his father played and taught him as a child. Its warm, rounded tone was the sound he imagined blending with violin and piano—and the mellow flugelhorn is an appropriate substitute. “With the same spirit of open-mindedness that Brahms himself had when he wrote this spectacular piece of chamber music,” Jens Lindemann says, “I had a custom made four-valved flugelhorn built in 24 karat gold plate with the name “Brahms” inscribed on it. The musical portrait of this instrument reflects both the straight tone and nobility of the modern horn as well as the voice-like vibrato inherent to viola or cello.”

Brahms was the first to compose a major chamber work for this ensemble—horn, violin, and piano—and the result remains a cornerstone of the repertoire. His love of, and skill with, thematic development is evident across all four movements. The opening theme establishes a peaceful, rustic tone, likely inspired by the Black Forest hills above Baden-Baden, where Brahms composed the work in 1865. He once showed a friend the exact hillside “on the wooden heights above the fir trees” where the theme first came to him. The structure of the movement is unusual: instead of his typical fast-tempo sonata movement, he begins with a lyrical Andante in extended ternary form (ABABA)—unique among his 25 chamber works.

Brahms was 32, and the loss of his mother earlier that year shadows the music. A somber mood intrudes on the otherwise exuberant Scherzo, while the slow movement—marked mesto (sorrowful)—stands as one of his most poignant tributes. It is, in effect, an elegy for a mother he adored. Near the movement’s end, Brahms hints at a folk song his mother had taught him—Dort in den Weiden steht ein Haus (“There in the willows, stands a house”)—which blooms fully into the hunt-like theme of the finale. The melody, charged with personal memory, brings both closure and uplift.

The Trio’s overall slow–fast–slow–fast structure nods to the Baroque church sonata. Yet emotionally, Brahms’s Op. 40 is one of his more romantic works. When composing a trio of his own for these three instruments, Hungarian composer György Ligeti described that of Brahms as “floating in the celestial spheres of the musical heaven as the incomparable example of this category of chamber music.”