Laura Ruiz, Christoph Berner, Manderling Quartet

Laura Ruiz, clarinet | Christoph Berner, piano | Manderling Quartet

PROGRAMME

J. Brahms:  Sonata for clarinet and piano in F minor, op 120 n. 1 / Sonata for clarinet and piano in E flat major, Op. 120 n. 2 / Quintet for clarinet and string quartet in B minor, op. 115

At the end of the 1880s, Brahms, the fervent Romantic born in Hamburg, destroyed a number of his manuscripts and announced his retirement as a composer. But hearing the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld at Meining made him change his mind. In 1891 he wrote a clarinet quintet and three years later he composed two sonatas for the instrument, works which he dedicated to Mühlfeld or, as Brahms called him, “Fräulein Klarinette”. These last chamber works written by Brahms before his death in 1897 are today considered masterworks in the clarinet repertoire.