Johannes Brahms: Trio in A minor, Op. 114
Tania Villasuso, clarinet
Jean Kim, cello
Ying Li, piano

Performed on Friday, November 10, 2017
Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia

Brahms’s trio for the unusual combination of clarinet, cello, and piano is one of four late chamber works the composer wrote for Richard Mühlfeld, the principal clarinetist of the Meiningen Court Orchestra. Brahms wrote the piece in 1891, having already made known his intention to retire from composition. It opens with a pensive Allegro featuring extended, interwoven melodies between cello and clarinet. The second movement is a relaxed and songlike Adagio, while the third is a dance movement pairing a Viennese waltz with an older genre called the Ländler, whose traditional yodeling accompaniment is admirably imitated by the clarinet. Finally, the brief but invigorating fourth movement returns to the minor key of the opening and introduces a level of energy and complexity not otherwise encountered in the work. The trio exemplifies the intimate quality of Brahms’s chamber writing, which prompted Brahms scholar Eusebius Mandyczewski to write, “it is as though the instruments were in love with each other.”

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