Trio for Violin, Violoncello and Piano op. 101

Christopher Hogwood’s scholarly-critical edition of Brahms’ final and perhaps greatest trio, Op. 101, is based on two main sources: the first edition and the autograph. The foreword of this edition presents information on contemporary performance practice; Hogwood has drawn on the comments of Fanny Davis, a Brahms student, to shed light on this. She describes how Brahms played the trio with Joseph Joachim and Robert Hausmann at an informal reading (with Clara Schumann turning pages) in Baden-Baden in approximately 1895. Davis’ descriptions have much to do with articulation, dynamics, and tempo fluctuations; in short, exactly those aspects of performance practice where we lack real direction.