Brahms - String Sextets arr. Kirchner for Piano Trio
£9.45
In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day
Despatch Information
This despatch estimate is based on information from both our own stock and the UK supplier's stock.
If ordering multiple items, we will aim to send everything together so the longest despatch estimate will apply to the complete order.
If you would rather receive certain items more quickly, please place them on a separate order.
If any unexpected delays occur, we will keep you informed of progress via email and not allow other items on the order to be held up.
If you would prefer to receive everything together regardless of any delay, please let us know via email.
Pre-orders will be despatched as close as possible to the release date.
Label: Brilliant Classics
Cat No: 96867
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Chamber
Release Date: 28th April 2023
Contents
Works
String Sextet no.1 in B flat major, op.18 (arr. T Kirchner for piano trio)String Sextet no.2 in G major, op.36 (arr. T Kirchner for piano trio)
Artists
Matteo Fossi (piano)Duccio Ceccanti (violin)
Vittorio Ceccanti (cello)
Works
String Sextet no.1 in B flat major, op.18 (arr. T Kirchner for piano trio)String Sextet no.2 in G major, op.36 (arr. T Kirchner for piano trio)
Artists
Matteo Fossi (piano)Duccio Ceccanti (violin)
Vittorio Ceccanti (cello)
About
While Kirchner pursued his own, less celebrated career as a composer, he found a reliable subsidiary source of income in making the kind of arrangements through which many listeners made their first encounters with larger-scale works. He seems to have specialised in doing this for Brahms, who regarded him as an outstanding craftsman in this respect. Most of Kirchner’s arrangements were for pianists, either solo or in duet; the notable exceptions being these piano-trio arrangements of the two string sextets which number among Brahms’s earliest successes in the field of chamber music.
The First Sextet, op.18, dates from five years earlier, premiered on 20 October 1860 in Hanover by an ensemble led by Joseph Joachim and published by Simrock in 1862. Here we find the beardless Brahms in excelsis, the 20-something composer always building up towards but cautiously skirting those perilous peaks of instrumental music which Beethoven conquered and defined in the string quartet and symphony. Falling between the two, the First Sextet in particular behaves like a veiled symphony, much as the First Serenade, op.15, had flexed symphonic muscles a few months earlier.
Simrock commissioned Kirchner to produce these piano-trio transcriptions in 1883, and they met with the composer’s wholehearted approval; according to Brahms, Kirchner had ‘executed [them] superbly’.
Kirchner replied that the new version of the sextets ‘would be a welcome gift for trio players’. The correspondence between the two men testifies not only to the warmth of their friendship but to the faith and trust placed by Brahms in Kirchner’s skills as an arranger. Brahms continued to recommend Kirchner’s services to Simrock, for transcriptions of his own and other composers’ music. He wrote in August 1891: ‘Would you consider replacing Keller with Kirchner for four-hand arrangements?... His elegant, buoyant style of writing would be much finer than the empty stiffness we now have.’
Error on this page? Let us know here
Need more information on this product? Click here