Schroeder Premieres

Johannes Brahms             

Sonata in F Major, Op. 99 (1886)

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With vocalist Amalie Joachim, violinist Henri Petri, and pianist Willy Rehberg, Alwin Schroeder toured Germany in all-Brahms programs that included this sonata and the C minor piano trio, Op. 101. Their Leipzig performance of the trio took place in March 1887, just three months after the work's world premiere, and nine months before Brahms himself performed it in Leipzig with Brodsky and Klengel. And Mrs. Joachim prevailed upon Simrock to postpone the publication of the F major cello sonata, Op. 99, until after the tour with Schroeder. (Clive, Brahms and His World: A Biographical Reader, p 243-4)

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         When Schroeder made his October 1891 debut as the new cellist of the Kneisel Quartet, it was in the US premiere of Brahms's G Major viola quintet, Op. 111. On April 8, 1892 the Op. 99 cello sonata was the program opener for Schroeder's first Boston cello recital, with Busoni at the piano. This was a Boston premiere, and possibly the first performance of the work in the US. Of it the Boston Musical Herald wrote, "...a work which, especially when so splendidly interpreted, needs no second hearing to be appreciated, rich, noble, melodious."  (May 1892, p. 114) Other reviews of this recital all but ignored the Brahms sonata, and there is no evidence that Schroeder ever played it again.