The third weekend of September, the Maastricht city center is entirely dedicated to Musica Sacra Maastricht. The four-day festival is always based around an annually changing theme that fulfills the key role throughout the program, which consists of about 100 program components each year.

Johannes Brahms learned to play natural horn as a child, still without valves. The instrument is associated with hunting and the forest, and for that reason also with melancholy.

Brahms composed his Trio for horn, violin and piano, as in memoriam for his mother, with whom he was very much connected. More than a century later György Ligeti wrote his own Trio as “Hommage à Brahms”, also for natural horn, reminiscent of the forest romance of the German poet Eichendorff. This work is all the more distressing when one considers that Ligeti’s mother was the only one of his Hungarian Jewish family to survive the camps.

Peter Hoeben (horn), Frank van de Laar (piano), Myrthe Helder (violin).

Program:
Johannes Brahms Horn Trio
Johannes Brahms Scherzo for violin and piano
György Ligeti Horn Trio

Source : Musica Sacra Web Site