Classical Music | Clarinet Music

Recorded on 03/22/2005, uploaded on 01/08/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Trio in A minor, Op. 114 for Clarinet, Cello and Piano          Johannes Brahms

Allegro; Adagio; Andantino grazioso; Allegro

By the end of 1890 Brahms had decided that his career was at an end. On completing his String Quintet, Op.111, he polished off a handful of incomplete canons, studies and songs, and then systematically destroyed all his remaining unfinished works. Sketches for a fifth symphony were amongst the "lot of torn-up manuscript paper" which, he told his publisher Simrock, he had thrown into the River Traun on leaving his summer resort of Ischl. Then, the following March, on a visit to Meiningen, Brahms heard the principal clarinet of the Court Orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld, in performances of a Weber concerto and Mozart's quintet, and was immediately fascinated. Mühlfeld, whose playing was so soft and expressive that Brahms dubbed him "Fraulein Klarinette", became the sole inspiration behind what was to be the final, radiantly autumnal phase of Brahms' career - two sonatas, a quintet and this trio.

The A minor Trio was written that same summer in Ischl, together with its larger cousin, the B minor Quintet, Op.115. With these two works, Brahms "restored wind instruments to the place in chamber music appointed for them by Mozart", although it is characteristic that, rather than the viola used by Mozart in his "Kegelstatt" Clarinet Trio, Brahms opted for the darker, richer sonorities provided by the cello. It received its first performance in December 1891 at the Berlin Singakademie, with Mühlfeld, Brahms and the cellist Robert Haussman. The trio is in four movements, characterized by lyricism and darkly romantic sonorities. The opening melody is supposed to have been that of the lost fifth symphony; it begins a broad, romantic movement with a terse, pensive development section and a beautifully-colored coda. A lyric sonata-form slow movement follows, characterized again by exquisite tone-coloring, and then a minuet-like andantino intermezzo with two trios.  A concise sonata-form allegro closes the Trio, written with an economy and thoroughness that has been compared to late Beethoven.    Alon Goldstein

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.