Walter Rabl 
Piano quartet in E flat major op. 1

Johannes Brahms 
Trio for horn, violin and piano - E flat major op. 40

Zdeněk Fibich
Quintet for piano, clarinet, horn, violin and violoncello in D major op. 42

• Ana Craciun, piano
• Maria Geißler, violin
• Caroline Steiner, violoncello
• Amelie Bertlwieser, clarinet
• Geoffrey Winter, horn

19:40 - Concert introduction with Tilmann Böttcher.

Large-scale chamber music with piano from the Romantic period almost always means expansive arrangements, sweeping themes, sharp contrasts and tonal opulence. Our solo horn player, Geoffrey Winter, has put together a program for the opening of our chamber concert season at the Beethoven-Haus, in which Johannes Brahms‘ early horn trio is certainly the best-known piece, but not the longest. Why do composers compose? The highly romantic program around piano and horn, one piece more beautiful than the other, provides three answers to this question – and we find that these answers do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the composition, its quality, its accessibility or its details: The young Johannes Brahms composed (at least part of) his trio when he was mourning the death of his mother. Mourning, coming to terms with the death of a loved one. Walter Rabl submitted his Quartet op. 1 to a composition competition and won a prize – the jury included none other than the now graying and famous Johannes Brahms. And Zdeněk Fibich’s themes for his piano quintet come in part from his thoroughly erotic musical diary, a collection of hundreds of piano pieces that the composer wrote for his lover, pupil and librettist Anežka Schulzová. And what does this music do to us? Everyone has to find out for themselves …