For this complete recording of Johannes Brahms's piano trios, the internationally successful Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger chose his usual top-class ensemble partners. Irnberger has long had an intense artistic friendship with the versatile cellist David Geringas, who, like the Russian-born pianist Lilya Zilberstein, can point to a number of CD recordings that are as long as they are impressive.

The Piano Trio no.1 in B major, op.8, can be heard here in the revised version, which closes the time gap of almost 25 years to the other two trios (no.2 in C major, op.87, and no.3 in C minor, op.101), since the revision took place after the completion of these works and thus at the peak of Brahmsian compositional art. For the Trio for Clarinet, Violoncello and Piano in A minor, op.114, Brahms envisaged the viola as an alternative instrumentation from the very beginning, which is mastered by Irnberger as brilliantly as the violin.