Johannes Brahms - Viola Sonata No. 1, Op. 120 (1895)

Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the “Three Bs“ of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow. Please support my channel: Viola Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 120 (1895) arrangement by Brahms of the Clarinet Sonata (1894) 1. Allegro appassionato (0:00) 2. Andante un poco adagio (8:00) 3. Allegretto grazioso (13:56) 4. Vivace (18:15) Gerard Causse, viola & François-René Duchâble, piano Johannes Brahms arranged both Clarinet Sonatas Op. 120 (1894) for Viola and Piano and for Violin and Piano in 1895. By 1890, Brahms vowed to retire from composing, but his promise was short lived. In January 1891 he made a trip to Meiningen for an arts festival and was captivated by performances of Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 and the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. The solo clarinetist was Richard Mühlfeld, and Brahms began a fond friendship with the man whom he so admired. The beautiful tone of “Fräulein Klarinette” (as Brahms would nickname Mühlfeld) inspired him to begin composing again less than a year after he retired. The fruits of their friendship were four remarkable additions to the still modest clarinet repertoire of that time, including the trio in A minor for clarinet, cello and piano Op 114 (1891), the B minor quintet for clarinet and strings, Op. 115 (1891), and two clarinet sonatas. In July 1894, at his Bad Ischl retreat, Brahms completed the sonatas. He wrote to Mühlfeld on August 26, inviting him to Bad Ischl, to perform them, stating cryptically that “it would be splendid if you brought your B♭ clarinet.“ As Muhlfeld had other commitments that summer, he delayed responding, but went to Vienna in September to meet Brahms and to acquaint himself with the two sonatas. They were first performed (by Brahms and Mühlfeld) privately for Duke Georg and his family in September of that year. Brahms and Mühlfeld then performed them for Clara Schumann in November 1894, before their public premieres on January 7, 1895. Brahms’ experience in writing his Clarinet Quintet three years earlier led him to compose the sonatas for clarinet and piano because he preferred the sound over that of clarinet with keys of the sonatas—F minor and E♭ major—correspond to the keys of the two clarinet concertos which Weber composed more than eighty years earlier.