Chamber Music Matinee

Clarinet and string quartet – a long-established ensemble for which composers have created outstanding works since the invention of the clarinet in the mid-18th century. Johannes Brahms' Clarinet Quintet op. 115, which was written after he had actually already finished his work as a composer and met the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld in 1891, who inspired him to write new works, still attracts particular attention. The special feature of this work is that the clarinet, with the timbre of a woodwind instrument, decisively shapes the character of the quintet. Almost 40 years before Brahms, Amilcare Ponchielli also explored these tonal colours in Italy by juxtaposing two clarinets with a string quartet and thus constructing a kind of musical encounter (it. "Il convegno"). And in the 20th century, it was the Englishman York Bowen who further expanded this sound world: he was one of the first to bring the bass clarinet out of the orchestra and into the chamber music ensemble. All of them – Bowen, Brahms and Ponchielli – influenced the repertoire of the clarinet and the string quartet in different ways.

Translated with DeepL.com