Paul Dean / Clarinet

Trish Dean / Cello

Alex Raineri / Piano

Live performance from the 2020 Brisbane Music Festival 'Streamed Series'.

Jai Farrell / Audio Engineer & Videographer

In 1890, Brahms declared the String Quintet in G major, Op. 111 to be his final work. Thankfully, this was not to be the case. The composer continued to write eleven more works for solo piano or voice and piano but perhaps most curiously, four major works featuring the clarinet as a primary instrument. Brahms was inspired by the German clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld and in 1891 composed the first of these four works, the Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114. A Quintet and two Sonatas were to follow, all composed for Mühlfeld whom Brahms once referred to as “his dear nightingale”.

The Trio, Op. 114 is somewhat sombre in its overall sentiment, though it is infused with moments of intense lyrical beauty (most strikingly in the gorgeous second movement) and dance-like lightness (in the waltz style third movement). One scholar suggests that in this trio “it is as if the instruments were in love with each other”. This statement cannot be refuted. The Trio embodies the essence of musical romanticism, at times darkly sonorous, at other times virtuosically sweeping. It is at all times a masterwork of chamber music, each of the three instruments given equal footing yet working as one singular expressive entity.