Category: Chamber Music

So far in this brass chamber music series, I have explored the quartet, trio, sextet and septet, which are all groups of mixed brass instruments. Of course, there can be trombone choirs, horn quartets, and tuba-euphonium quartets (two different instruments, but basically homogenous). For us trumpeters, there is the trumpet ensemble. You might think this…

As we have seen over the past few posts, the tradition of brass chamber music developed strongly in German and Scandinavian countries in the 19th Century. Germany embraced the quartet, German-Russian composers and players developed the quintet (I haven’t gotten to the quintet, yet, in this series of chamber music blogs), and in Sweden the…

Up until recently, I had known only about one brass sextet by Oskar Böhme, who was born in Germany, studied in Leipzig, and worked in St. Petersburg (and exiled to Orenburg under Stalin’s purge in 1936). Here’s a video recording of members of the Karajan Academy performing this absolutely wonderful work. There is another notable…

If you don’t have an embouchure of steel, then don’t go here. The brass trio is almost always a difficult group to play in because of stamina issues. But you may be surprised at the depth of repertoire this genre has amassed. The normal instrumentation for this group is trumpet, horn and trombone. I played…

We all love brass quintets. They seem to be the staple of our chamber music. It’s a very good amount of brass players to help with melody, bass, harmony and letting someone usually rest (always a bonus in brass music). But there are other groups that you should consider. Today’s post is a brief plug…