Trio in A minor Op.114, for Viola, ‘Cello and Piano
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, 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. It received its first performance in December 1891 at the Berlin Singakademie, with Mühlfeld, Brahms and the ‘cellist Robert Haussman. Brahms himself transcribed the clarinet part for viola; he must have felt that its dusky tone was the violin family’s closest parallel to the sound of the clarinet, as he also transcribed his two late clarinet sonatas for the viola. The trio is in four movements, characterised 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-coloured coda. A lyric sonata-form slow movement follows, characterised again by exquisite tone-colouring, 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.
R.G.Bratby 1997 revised 2000
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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