Carinthian Music Salon: Clarinet Quintet

Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, composed in 1789, sublimates the composer’s love for the instrument whose timbre comes closest to the human voice. The result was a work whose stylistic coherence is unparalleled even within the context of the work of a genius like Mozart. In the words of Richard Strauss, [through] the composer in melancholy cheerfulness […] the whole gamut of human feeling can be heard and experienced. On the other hand, the Clarinet Quintet created a century later by Johannes Brahms has an air of farewell about it: after the completion of the string quintet op. 111, , the composer considered his musical work to be finished. In 1891, however, he met the Meiningen clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, whose self-taught skills so impressed Brahms, that he wrote four works for him, including the Clarinet Quintet. Like Mozart’s Quintet, this one ends with a variation movement. However, where Mozart culminates in a snappy finale, Brahms conveys the impression of a farewell to the beautiful world with the words of his biographer Max Kalbeck.