ExclusiveBrahms: Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114 - II. Adagio

【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Johannes Brahms: Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114 - II. Adagio. This beautiful piece was played by Paul Pitman. It has common licence (Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal) and is provided through musopen.org.

The Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114, is one of four chamber works by Johannes Brahms that feature the clarinet as the primary instrument. Composed in the summer of 1891 in Bad Ischl for the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, it was first performed privately on 24 November 1891 in Meiningen, followed by a public performance in Berlin on 12 December of that year.

Brahms composed the Clarinet Trio while staying in Bad Ischl in the summer of 1891. This followed a creative crisis for Brahms, who had grown tired of composing after completing the challenging revision of his Piano Trio, Op. 8. In late 1890, Brahms had even announced to his publisher, Fritz Simrock, that he was going to quit composing altogether.

However, Brahms's closer acquaintance with Richard Mühlfeld, the principal clarinettist of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, inspired him to dedicate himself to three new chamber music combinations featuring the clarinet between 1891 and 1894. Brahms had likely first met Mühlfeld in October 1881 during a visit to the court of Meiningen, but their closer collaboration developed ten years later. In letters to friends, Brahms raved about Mühlfeld's playing. In March 1891, he wrote to Clara Schumann: 'One cannot play the clarinet more beautifully than Herr Mühlfeld does here'.

Brahms took the memories of his time in Meiningen with him on holiday to Ischl, where he completed the first movement of the Clarinet Trio by the end of June. The piece was finished soon after, and Brahms sent the manuscript to his friend Eusebius Mandyczewski in Vienna with a modest note saying it was 'the twin sister of an even bigger folly', in reference to the Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115.

The piece calls for a clarinet, a piano and a cello, and it is one of the few pieces in this genre to have entered the standard repertoire.

The sea of fog was captured by Christian Schlegel and the video edited by Wenjing Ma.



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