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The mountain goat, high and distant, appears as still sustained tones.
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The mass and strength of the lion are represented by dense chords that become internally activated and rhythmically pulsed. “Three different musical ideas form Chimera's DNA. When I began looking for inspiration for a new work for trio-three individual voices that merge into a single entity-the three-part Chimera was the perfect choice. The Sphinx, the Manticore, the Kotobuki, Anubis, Ganesha, and of course the Gryphon are all examples of chimeras (as are most marmosets and more than a few humans). Over time, ‘chimera’ came to describe any creature, mythical or real, comprised of multiple DNAs. “The original Chimera from Greek mythology was a fire-breathing hybrid of lion, goat, and serpent. Music TORONTO’s Composer Advisor Jeffrey Ryan writes about Chimera, commissioned by Jennifer Taylor for the Gryphon Trio in celebration of Music TORONTO’s 50th anniversary: Although the music ends in the minor, its mood is confident and hard-won.
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But it immediately gives way to a brightly assertive D major second theme that introduces a valedictory tone to the movement. The questioning B minor cello theme that opens the finale, introduces a note of restlessness. The slow movement is built upon a solemn, expansive chorale-like opening, again showing the influence of the Archduke trio but now speaking in Brahms’s mature voice – the more so with a new, autumnal second theme. Together with its broadly lilting, waltz-like trio, it is virtually unchanged from the 1854 publication. The deftly scurrying Scherzo pays homage to Mendelssohn. Other Brahmsian thumbprints, like hemiola patterns and additional rhythmical shifts, add new energy, direction and tautness to the music. Its expansive nature, on the scale of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, ensures that the broad sweep of the opening movement will remain, though this is virtually all that does remain from the earlier version of the trio. It is instantly recognisable as Brahmsian, being characteristically nutty brown in texture, somewhat wistful in mood. 8, Brahms retains the lyrical opening theme. Brahms jokingly referred to it as his Op. “I did not provide it with a wig,” he said in a manner calculated to confuse, “I just arranged its hair a little!” It is this revised version, written after a lifetime of composition and after almost one hundred published works, that is usually played today. Striking, too, is the skill with which Brahms sustains the youthful energy of the first version. What is striking is that Brahms, who assiduously destroyed his sketches and early drafts, entered the process knowing that a work that had been in circulation for nearly 40 years could not be deleted from his catalogue. He tightened its expansive style, simplified its structure and used its themes as the building blocks of what is, essentially, a new work, one third shorter than the original. “It will not be so wild as before,” he wrote to Clara Schumann, who had helped workshop the earlier version. 8, not long after being proclaimed a musical genius by Schumann – “springing forth like Minerva fully armed from the head of Jove.” Then, late in life, in 1889, when a new publisher acquired rights to several of his chamber music compositions, Brahms took the opportunity to re-write a piece first conceived by an up and coming 20-year-old. He wrote the first version in 1853-4 and published it as his Op. 8 is both the first and last work Brahms wrote in the medium of piano trio. The piano trio gave Brahms the most comfortable, natural vehicle for his carefully crafted compositions. Before Brahms, Beethoven had found his voice in the string quartet Schubert, for the most part, found his in the string quintet and Schumann his, in the piano quintet. With an overall catalogue of 24 widely varied chamber compositions spanning four decades, it’s arguably the piano trios that best marry the medium with the message. But the expressive musicality of Richard Mühlfeld, the Meiningen Court clarinettist, propelled him to add a coda of four more glorious chamber works as the finale to his creative life. His original plan was to bookend his output with two versions of a piano trio, written 35 years apart – and then retire. 1889)īorn in Hamburg, Germany, died in Vienna, Austria, April 3, 1897īrahms took his chamber music seriously and re-energized the medium for the later 19th century, raising it to the highest level of achievement.