The positive response to Capriccio’s first release of Labor’s Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet (C5390) enabled this series to be continued with three works representative of Labor’s output from the early 1890s.

In Vienna, Labor was part of Johannes Brahms’s close circle of friends. Brahms particularly valued his composer colleagues who went their own way without copying him. Labor’s music is very skillfully composed, always sensuous, and first and foremost melodious; it does not require too deep a scrutiny. Around eighty of his compositions have survived. They include practically no occasional works, arising from the fact that he was blind. For him, composition was a luxury, insofar as he had to rely on the help of an amanuensis who had to commit the work to paper.