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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
August 6, 2013
In October 1896 Anton Bruckner died. Johannes Brahms did not attend the funeral. When asked why, he replied gloomily "it will be my turn soon enough". He was right - less than six months later he too was dead.
Given that some seven years earlier, Brahms had resolved to give up composing, one might imagine that the last years of his life were unremittingly bleak.
Which they might have been, were it not for one person: the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld.
Mühlfeld was a member of the Meiningen orchestra, widely regarded as the finest of its time (and which he had originally joined as a violinist); when Brahms heard him playing Mozart and Weber, his compositional urge was revitalised. Of the works which he composed in his last years, four included the clarinet and were composed for - and premiered by - Mühlfeld.
Tuesday night's all-Brahms Victoria Summer Music Festival concert from Jane Coop, Cris Inguanti and Ariel Barnes included two of those works - and one other - in performances it would be hard to imagine bettered.
The culmination of the evening was the Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano, Op.114 - the first of the Mühlfeld-inspired pieces.
In comparing this with the music we heard immediately before the interval - the Op.99 cello sonata - there was a distinct sense of rejuvenation, although the music itself is hardly untroubled.
The opening movement's underlying turbulence was never far from the surface, although the exquisite playing of the second subject was a temporary distraction. The second movement, which at first I thought a little too quick, was utterly mesmerising in its aching loveliness.
Percy Grainger - no mean exponent of Brahms himself - once wrote a piece entitled "Gay but Wistful" (a century's linguistic change has somewhat altered the meaning of that phrase) and that title, in its original sense, could easily have applied to the third movement. The finale brought back the unease of the opening movement and yet was full of bounce and charm.
A truly excellent performance of a great masterpiece.
The Cello Sonata, Op.99, came, of course, before Brahms went "on hiatus" - as they say today. And while no single bar of either piece could conceivably have been the work of any other composer, the difference between the sonata and the trio was nevertheless marked.
The sonata finds Brahms still in his ardent, yearning frame of mind, whereas in his late works we find, not resignation, but rather acceptance.
In the opening movement, Barnes grabbed the music by the scruff of its neck and did not let go. The music is like a tidal wave - although few tidal waves have exposition repeats, here observed, for which many thanks - and has some distinctly individual features, most notably the almost aggressive tremolos on alternating strings. The slow movement has a basic ambiguity at the opening - is the melody with the piano or the cello? - and featured soaring lines from the cello.
The scherzo - aptly designated - was marvellously forceful, the trio somewhat gentler. Only in the finale did the music hint at the playful.
A superb performance.
The evening opened with the first of the two clarinet sonatas, Op.120 No.1.
Inguanti and Coop gave a performance of great concentration and insight. I was particularly moved by the gorgeous slow movement; charmed by the delicate waltz of the intermezzo-like third movement and the finale's sense of the ephemeral, of the evanescence of life.
From the opening bars of the sonata to the finale notes of the trio, all three musicians were at the peak of their form and everything was at the service of the music.
One of those rare occasions when the reality exceeds the anticipation.
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