PREVIEW NOTES

Anthony McGill, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Gloria Chien, Wednesday, February 10 – 6 PM American Philosophical Society

PROGRAM

Viola in E-flat Major, Op. 120, No. 2 Trio in E-flat Major, K. 498, Kegelstatt Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Born: May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany Born: January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria Died: April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria Died: December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria Composed: 1894 Composed: 1786 Duration: 21 minutes Duration: 21 minutes

The No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 120, has three movements; the Mozart composed this richly imaginative Trio for clarinet, wealth of long-limbed, lyrical melody in the opening and viola, and piano for Franziska von Jacquin, one of his best closing movements led Brahms to abandon the idea of a slow piano pupils, and purportedly wrote the clarinet part for his movement in favor of a scherzo-type middle movement in E- good friend , for whom he also wrote his Clarinet flat Minor; the central trio section, a B Major Sostenuto ("ma Quintet. The German word Kegelstatt means skittles, a game dolce e ben cantando"), serves nicely to fill the gap left by that which Mozart reputedly loved that involved knocking down missing slow movement. The finale is a theme and variations nine pins by rolling a wooden ball or disk. The Trio largely in which the clarinet and piano join together to spin yard after eschews virtuosity in favor of exploiting the natural lyrical yard of silken, overlapping, arpeggiated spiderwebs. qualities of the clarinet and viola. The result is what has been aptly termed one of his most perfectly integrated in F Minor, Op. 120, No. 1 compositions, with an interplay among the three instruments Johannes Brahms full of delightfully subtle touches. Composed: 1894 Duration: 23 minutes

In a period of creativity near the end of his career, Johannes Brahms wrote the two , Op. 120 (1894), the Trio for Clarinet, , and Piano, Op. 114 (1891), and the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, Op. 115 (1891), especially for Richard Mühlfeld, a clarinetist he much admired. The Clarinet Sonata No 1 in F Minor, Op. 120, opens with a tense Allegro appassionato that makes full use of the clarinet's higher register and eventually winds down to a tenderly expressive coda. The following Andante sustains the sweetly reflective mood, and after a dancelike Allegretto led by the clarinet—a tune that could easily have come from one of the Liebeslieder Waltzes—the work ends with a high-spirited Vivace.