Albert Dietrich

After much research, Gudrun Schumann presents a second collection of works by Schumann and his creative contemporaries. These are interesting compositions. The works by Theodor Kirchner and Carl Reinecke are premiere recordings.

After much research, Gudrun Schumann presents a second collection of works by Schumann and his creative contemporaries. These are interesting compositions. The works by Theodor Kirchner and Carl Reinecke are premiere recordings.

Seeing a Sinfonia in B of Brahms in an online list of work titles will puzzle most listeners. A closer look reveals a work that's doubly unusual: Swedish conductor and violinist Joseph Swensen has made an orchestral transcription of the Brahms Trio in B major, Op. 8, and he has used the early and rarely heard 1853 version of the piece. Swensen is right that the early version, filled with effusive Schumann-like melody that was redone into complex motivic work in the revision, is worth more frequent hearings, and it goes well with the smaller pieces included: orchestrated versions of the three Romances for violin and piano, Op. 22, of Clara Schumann, and two movements of the even rarer F-A-E Sonata composed collaboratively by Schumann, Brahms, and Albert Dietrich (the initials stood for "Frei Aber Einsam," or free but lonely, the personal motto of violinist Joseph Joachim, the work's dedicatee).