Piano Trio in B Major, Opus 8
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna

The Trio in B Major had a curious genesis: Brahms composed it twice. He wrote the first version in 1853, when he was only twenty, and the trio was played in that form for nearly forty years. Then late in life and at the height of his creative powers, Brahms returned to this work of his youth and subjected it to a revision so thorough that it amounted to a virtual re-composition. A comparison of the two versions (both have been recorded) shows how greatly Brahms had refined his compositional techniques across the course of his career.

It was the development sections of the early version that bothered the mature Brahms most, and when he revised the trio, he kept the opening section of each movement virtually intact but wrote new second subjects for the first, third and fourth movements. The development sections, which had been episodic and unfocused in the first version, became concise and economic in the second. As revised, the Trio in B Major combines some of the best features of early and late Brahms: his youthful impetuosity has been wedded to an enormously refined technique.

Brahms joked that perhaps he should change the opus number from 8 to 108 but finally decided to let the original number stand, and that is misleading-far from being an early work, the later version offers some of his most mature and sophisticated music.

Cello and piano open the first movement with a theme of such characteristic breadth and nobility that anyone hearing it recognizes the composer immediately. In the first version, Brahms had included the violin in this opening statement; in the later version, he made this glowing melody slightly more concise and eliminated the violin. Also in the revision Brahms eliminated a complicated fugue from the development section.

The Scherzo was the one movement that Brahms kept almost intact, only substituting a new coda for the original. It is easy to understand Brahms' affection for this music, with its propulsive opening rhythm and lyric second subject.

The Adagio profited greatly from revision, for Brahms composed a new second theme of such autumnal lyricism that it transforms this movement from the effort of a tentative beginner to the work of a master. The finale pulses darkly forward on dotted rhythms, and the conclusion is unusual in that the music ends not in the expected home key, but in B minor.

In its original form, the Trio in B Major was performed quickly and widely: the première took place in Danzig on October 13, 1855, and the first performance in America took place the following month, on November 27, 1855, in New York City.

The violinist on that occasion was the twenty-year-old Theodore Thomas, who later moved to a raw town in the West and founded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.