Johannes Brahms admired only a few fellow musicians as highly as he did Robert Kahn, who was thirty years his junior; the fact that Brahms, in great demand as a composer and 'stingy' when it came to giving lessons, discussed Kahn’s compositions and studied the old masters with him documents their great mutual interest.
It may also be regarded as a special distinction that Kahn was the only third party in attendance when Brahms presented his late Clarinet Trio op. 114 to Clara Schumann.
Lending their support to this forgotten talent, the members of the Max Brod Trio have now recorded his two Piano Trios op. 19 and op. 33 in the finest sound technology.
Kahn displays his highly independent compositional mind. on this recording, although the form of his quartets refers more to classical models than to Brahms. In the second Piano Trio op. 33 in 1900, he was already very finely established in Berlin’s cultural life. He associated with Christian Morgenstern and Gerhart Hauptmann, Joseph Joachim was his chamber music partner, and he taught at the Royal Conservatory, where Wilhelm Kempff and Artur Rubinstein later numbered among his students.
This new recording continues the Max Brod Trio's successful recording projects on Audiomax, and once again the finely balanced 3-D sound on Super Audio CD makes for surprising listening pleasure.
