Classical Music | Music for Trio

Recorded on 10/16/2019, uploaded on 04/02/2020

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Arranged by Merz Trio

To pair with the Brahms and close out our program, we've transcribed Schumann's beloved "Widmung," ("Dedication") from Myrthen, Op. 25, one of his most well known songs and a wedding present to his wife Clara. The piece, like its text, is abundant and apologetic, burning with a youthful ardour, yet, like the later version of Brahms' B Major Trio, this fire of youth is tempered by deep experience. Prior to composing "Widmung," Robert and Clara sought -- and never obtained -- Friederich Wieck's (Clara's father's) permission to marry over a period of many years that ended only in a long and bitter legal dispute. Far from the innocence of youthful love, the passion in Schumann's "Widmung" prefigures a more knowing, deeply felt, mature love. Both fittingly and tragically, Brahms' B Major Trio was written during Schumann's final years, when Brahms had already become a close personal friend of both the Schumanns. The romantic, lyric passion of the Brahms Trio represents a particularly Schumannian quality in Brahms' writing, while the sense of darkness and sorrow throughout the work perhaps looks ahead to Schumann's own tragic demise that was soon to follow.            Notes by Lee Dionne

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.