Madsen’s Horn Trio, from Prague to Copenhagen
Pianist Miroslav Sekera was listed with Zhicheng Jin and Jakub Fišer for Madsen’s Horn Trio at Prague Spring on 19 May 2025. Photo: Daniel Havel. Source: Prague Spring. Source.
A competition winner’s return to Prague and a Sunday morning meeting of music and architecture in Copenhagen gave Madsen’s Horn Trio two quite different programme settings in 2025. A recent International Horn Society feature adds another route into the work, pointing listeners towards an existing recording.
The Prague programme began with a returning young musician. Zhicheng Jin, winner of the 2024 Prague Spring horn competition, was announced for the festival’s winners’ concert on 19 May 2025 at the National Technical Museum. For Madsen’s Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, Op. 110, his partners were violinist Jakub Fišer and pianist Miroslav Sekera. [1]
Jin had been seventeen when he won, in a field of fifty-three players from eleven countries. His return programme brought the Madsen trio together with Mozart’s Horn Quintet, K. 407, and Brahms’s Horn Trio, Op. 40. Prague Spring described the evening as its first presentation of music by Madsen. [1]
The Bennewitz Quartet was also named on the concert bill. Fišer, the quartet’s first violinist, was listed on violin in the Madsen and Brahms works and on viola in Mozart’s quintet. Sekera was the pianist for the two trios. The evening programme placed Madsen alongside two earlier works involving the horn in chamber music. [1]
Six months later, the same work appeared in a programme in Copenhagen. Copenhagen Phil’s Halv12 series listed it for 23 November at the Danish Architecture Center, with Emilie Ravn Jensen on horn, Anne Ngoc Søe on violin and Emil Gryesten Jensen at the piano. [2]
The Copenhagen event, titled Arkitektur & komposition, combined music with a conversation about architecture and composition. Composer Håkon Guttormsen and architect Lauge Floris were the announced discussion participants, with broadcaster Mathias Hammer moderating. The event also included a premiere by Guttormsen. Madsen’s trio formed part of the concert programme surrounding that discussion. [2]
With an 11:30 a.m. start at the centre’s concert hall on Bryghuspladsen, the Copenhagen event placed chamber music within a Sunday morning conversation. Its published programme names all three musicians against the Madsen trio, a different group of performers from those announced in Prague. [2]
In July 2026, Layne Anspach returned to the trio in the International Horn Society’s Chamber Music Corner. His account highlights the way each player takes a turn presenting a movement’s melody, and describes the violin and horn lines supporting the piano as “intriguing”. He directs readers to Genuin’s 2012 Works for Horn recording. [3]
On that album, the trio is performed by Trio Tricolor. The recording presents all three movements — Allegro moderato, Andante con moto and Allegretto — and lasts approximately 17 minutes. It can be found on Apple Music Classical, while a recording of the opening movement is also available on YouTube. [4]
Works for Horn was Christoph Eß’s debut album for Genuin, with violinist Korbinian Altenberger and pianist Boris Kusnezow among the musicians. Listeners who arrive through the trio can stay with Madsen: the programme also includes his Horn Sonata, Horn Quintet and Horn Concerto, bringing four of his works for the instrument together on one release. [5]
Listen and watch
Related recording: Trio Tricolor, Genuin, 2012.
- Listen to Works for Horn
- Listen to the trio’s second movement on Spotify
- Listen to the opening movement on YouTube