# Question for Brahms or chamber specialists



## confuoco (Feb 8, 2008)

I love Brahms *Piano Trio No. 1*, especially the main theme of the first movement is among Brahms the most lovely and large-scale musical ideas. But I like much more aspects in this work of course.

I know about this Opus 8, that it was originally released in 1854 as Piano Trio in B major and later, in 1889, Brahms made an extenisve rendition; this new version is known as Piano Trio in b minor.

I own a few recordings of this work (the same score), for example Stern, Rose and Istomin performance and I naturally supposed it to be the original version from 1854. But when I was looking on score available on IMSLP (from 1854), I was surprised, because there is a lot of differences between my recordings and this score, just for example different ending of the first movement, totally different second theme of the last movement etc. But opening and main theme of the first movement is the same in recording and score. Maybe I am wrong, unfortunately I haven't absulute pitch, but I think the main theme on recording is in B _major_ and not b _minor_, so it can't be rendition from 1889.

So my question is where is the origin of the the version of Stern/Rose/Istomin recording (from my point of view the most frequently performed and recorded version) and if somebody knows any recording of 1889 b minor or original 1884 B major version, or has some notes to this issue, thanks.


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## agoukass (Dec 1, 2008)

Brahms was dissatisfied with the original version, which was considerably longer than the many people know. The original second movement was an extended set of variations on a song from Beethoven's "An die ferne Geliebte." Brahms essentially scrapped most of the work and re-wrote it. 

This is what I remember, anyway.


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