Horn Trios
A dazzling trio in horn trios by Banks, Berkeley and Brahms. Anyone who caught their Australian performances in 1998 will know how wonderfully these musicians work together.
The programme pairs Lennox Berkeley's Horn Trio, Op. 44, and Don Banks's 1962 Horn Trio with Brahms's classic Trio in E-flat major, Op. 40.
John Harding (violin), Hector McDonald (horn) and Ian Munro (piano) recorded the works in the Concert Hall of the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music in January 1997, on a Stuart & Sons piano.
Reviews
The three Bs represented on this disc are not the usual threesome invoked in music’s pantheon, but two of them, Brahms (who usually makes it in Germanic versions of the three Bs) and the Australian Don Banks, are almost inevitably involved when the category of music being performed is that of the horn trio (horn, violin and piano).
Brahms’s horn trio is probably the supreme work of its genre. Banks did so well in fashioning a horn trio under the influence of serial principles of composition that his work - written in 1962 for the Australian musicians Barry Tuckwell, Brenton Langbein and Maureen Jones - makes him a logical candidate in this instance for alliterative grouping with Brahms.
Lennox Berkeley, an English composer who once collaborated with Britten (you can hear the influence of his great contemporary on him from time to time in this piece) and who has an accomplished composer son, Michael, does not rival the creative achievements of his fellow composers here, but does add an outstandingly agreeable and typically shapely piece.
The three instrumentalists who perform these works are eminent Australian players. Hector McDonald is solo horn with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, John Harding is co-concertmaster of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Ian Munro is a very highly regarded concerto soloist and chamber music pianist who plays an Australian-made Stuart piano on this disc. These three musicians recently toured Australia for Musica Viva, confirming the quality of collaboration they exhibit here. The recorded sound is generous and suitably radiant.
Artists
Ian Munro
Ian Munro has emerged as one of Australia’s most distinguished and awarded musicians, a pianist and composer whose career has taken him to thirty countries across Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.
Lennox Berkeley
Lennox Berkeley wrote music of French clarity and English reserve: lucid textures, shapely melody and a concise, tonal idiom that later absorbed serial colour without abandoning a centre. His chamber and piano works favour craft and charm over display.
John Harding
John Harding's violin brings lyric fire and chamber poise to horn trios by Brahms, Banks and Berkeley, to Carl Vine's Third Quartet, and to Arthur Benjamin's neglected sonatinas and miniatures, played with characteristic élan.
Don Banks
Don Banks (1923–1980) was an Australian composer of concert, jazz and commercial music. Serial craft, electronics and a lifelong pull toward jazz shaped chamber works, concertos and scores central to mid-century Australian modernism.
Hector McDonald
Hector McDonald's horn has a golden, unforced bloom, whether threading Classical concertos or locking into chamber dialogue. From Haydn and Telemann to Brahms, Banks and Berkeley, the line stays poised, radiant and soloistic.
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. His music for piano, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and voice remains central to the concert repertoire.
Tracks
- i. Allegro 5:28
- ii. Lento 6:19
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Theme :45
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Allegro vivace 1:05
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Allegretto :58
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Lento 1:52
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Vivace :47
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Andante 1:39
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Moderato 1:01
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Adagio 2:10
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Moderato :55
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Allegro vivo 1:07
- iii. Tema (Moderato) with Variations – Moderato 1:02
- i. Lento and Variations 6:07
- ii. Adagio and Variations 5:19
- iii. Moderato and Variations 3:48
- i. Andante 8:03
- ii. Scherzo 8:03
- iii. Adagio mesto 7:22
- iv. Finale (Allegro con brio) 6:22
Trio, Op. 44 Lennox Berkeley
Trio Don Banks
Trio in E-Flat Major, Op. 40 Johannes Brahms
Performers
- Ian Munro · piano
- John Harding · violin
- Hector McDonald · horn
Contributors
Cover Photo
Belinda Webster
Belinda Webster is the founder of Tall Poppies Records and a leading Australian producer and recording engineer whose work has documented classical, contemporary and jazz performance across decades of catalogue releases.
Liner Notes
Graeme Skinner
Graeme Skinner writes the annotations that turn Tall Poppies recordings into fully armed listening: texts, contexts and sharp musical argument for everything from Mozart’s rude canons to Sculthorpe’s complete string quartets.
Piano Technician
Wayne Stuart
Where to listen
Horn Trios is available for streaming through Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.
Horn Trios is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.
Product details
- Catalogue number
- TP114
- Total playing time
- 70 minutes 12 seconds
- Producer
- Belinda Webster
- Recording Engineer
- Belinda Webster
- Venue
- Newcastle Conservatorium of Music Concert Hall
- Thanks to
- B. Stuart
Robert Constable - Credit
- Belinda Webster
Graeme Skinner
Wayne Stuart - Release date
- 12 Sep 1998
- Label
- Tall Poppies
- Musical work
copyright - © 1998 Tall Poppies Records
- Sound recording
copyright - ℗ 1998 Tall Poppies Records
- Categories
- Australian Classics, Great Classics, Modern Masterpieces
- Genres
- Romantic & Impressionist, Modernist Classical
- Barcode
- EAN 9399001111428
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