MOBILE RED HEDGEHOG - Flipbook - Page 16
Johannes Brahms 1833-1897
Clarinet Quintet in b minor, Op. 115 1891
I Allegro
II Adagio
III Andantino
IV Con moto
In 1890 Brahms completed his String Quintet in G
major, Op.111, and announced that this would be
his final work as, at 57, he was giving up
composing. Around this time many of his old
friends died and, with a feeling of depression, he
became obsessed with his own mortality.
Fortunately he received a new stimulus and the
decision was reversed. For that we owe a debt to
one man. In March 1891 Brahms visited Meiningen
to hear one of the greatest orchestras of the day,
under its new conductor Fritz Steinbach. He was
immediately impressed by the playing of the
orchestra's clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld and a firm
friendship soon developed between the two men.
It was Mühlfeld who provided the stimulus for
Brahms to write his last four great chamber works
for clarinet—the Trio, the two Sonatas, and the
Quintet.
The quintet was written in 1891 at Brahms' summer
retreat of Ischl in the Salzkammergut, and it was
first performed in December of the same year at
one of Joachim's concerts in Berlin, when the
critics declared it to be the finest work for clarinet
since Mozart's.
