Thomas Albertus Irnberger, violin, and Pavel Kašpar, piano, lead us with this album into the bourgeois salon of the late 19th century – an oasis amid the "good old days" which weren’t, of course, that good to begin with: mired turmoil, social inequalities, and wars as much and more than ever since. The invited audience were to listen to Hungarian dances by Brahms, Kodály or Rachmaninoff, Csárdás’ by Franz Lehár, Miska Hauser or Jeno Hubay, Romances, Fantasies and other melodies by Tchaikovsky, Leopold Auer, Carl Bohm or Joseph Joachim. Some songs from operettas by Lehár, Jeno Huszka, Emmerich Kálmán and Pongrác Kacsóh with the Hungarian soprano Brigitta Simon complete this musical visit to the "Salon de Budapest"

For this complete recording of Johannes Brahms' 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 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.

The work of pianist Jörg Demus was one of the most important musical exports of Austria after the end of the Second World War. In addition to many other musical partners Demus also entertained a very fruitful collaboration with the established Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger, which is documented on the occasion of his death with 90 years in April 2019 with this collection with mostly unpublished recordings. In addition to Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Sonatas No. 1 in D major Op. 12 No. 1, No. 5 in F major Op. 24 and No. 6 in A major Op. 30 No. 1 there are two sonatas for violin and piano by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1016/BWV 1017), the Three Romances Op. 94 by Robert Schumann and the famous Sonatina in G major Op. 100 by Antonin Dvorak. The fact that Jörg Demus, in addition to his extensive concert tours and engagements as lecturer, appeared also as a composer in the last decades of his life is only known to proven connoisseurs. One can hear his Sonatas for Violin and Piano Op. 7 "Gahberg Sonata", Op. 35 "Il tramonto" and Op. 48 "Sonata sylvestre / Forest Sonata".