Forest Solitude by Brahms, Od (2024/2024), Church Of St Peter And St Paul, London, United Kingdom

We buried her yesterday at one o’clock’ wrote Brahms on the death of his mother. ‘She had not changed at all and looked as sweet and kind as when she was alive.’ Overcome with grief, Brahms found solace in long springtime walks through the Black Forest, where he composed a haunting trio for violin, horn and piano. Two of its movements are based on a folk melody that his mother probably taught him as a child – just one of a sequence of songs performed by two Ryedale Festival Young Artists as a prologue to one of Brahms’s most moving and inspired works. ‘Her graceful, singing line, gleaming tone, and breathtaking use of pianissimo made the Tully Hall crowd sit bolt upright’ Musical America