Also blus das Alphorn heut - MVSR3483 | Musica

When Johannes Brahms was, in the late summer of 1868, recuperating in the Swiss Alps, a very real „inspiration“ happened to him: somewhere in the distance, he heard an alphorn play a melody, that he immediately wrote down. The following day, he sent this notation to his friend (and maybe lover?) Clara Schumann (wife of the composer Robert Schumann) as a greeting for her birthday. As a title above the notes, he wrote ”Also blus das Alphorn heut” (“This is what the alphorn played today”). Years later, this melody appeared in the introduction to the final movement of his 1st Symphony.

Stefan Schwalgin has combined the alphorn theme with the symphony movement’s main theme and thus created an independent orchestral miniature. He used the two melodically most striking moments of Brahms’ original version. The alphorn theme thereby acquires a more prominent role. A gain for all friends of “alpine” wind literature and, moreover, an excellent way to make the great symphonist Johannes Brahms accessible to the wind orchestra audience.