Classical Music | Violin Music

Johannes Brahms

Sonata for Piano and Viola Op. 120, No. 1 in f minor  Play

Arianna Smith Violin
Kay Kim Piano

Recorded on 10/30/2014, uploaded on 10/30/2014

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

On a visit to Meiningen in March 1891, Brahms heard the orchestra’s principal clarinetist, Richard Mühlfeld, play one of the Weber clarinet concertos. The composer was deeply impressed, and that summer he played in the premiere of his Clarinet Trio op. 114.  He so enjoyed the experience that in the summer of 1894, he wrote the two Sonatas of Op. 120 – his last chamber music – to play with Mühlfeld. Brahms also loved the rich, warm sound of the viola and within days of sending the Clarinet Sonatas to his publisher, Brahms sent alternative parts for viola.

The F-minor Sonata is the more conventionally structured of the two, in four movements. The Sonata’s progression from dark to light is completed in the finale, a sonata-rondo romp of almost Haydnesque impertinence, but thoroughly Brahmsian in its structural rigor. The three chiming notes at the beginning return to cue the major points, however, and the prevailing chuckling provides a blithe cover for the complexities, and carries the piece to its exuberant conclusion.                    Notes by John Henken

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Sonata for Clarinet and Piano No. 1 in F minor       Johannes Brahms

Brahms composed his two sonatas for the clarinet for the principal clarinetist of the Meiningen orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld. These two sonatas, published as op. 120, with the Clarinet Trio in A minor, op. 114 and the B minor Clarinet Quintet, op. 115 were Brahms’s last chamber works. They have since become cornerstones of the clarinet repertoire. Brahms also published alternate versions of the works for viola and piano, which became the first published sonatas for that instruments, as well as, versions for the violin.

The F minor sonata, unlike its counterpart in E flat major, follows an orthodox four movement design. The appassionata first movement, despite its lyrical melodies, invokes the stormy nature Brahms had always associated with that key. Like many of Brahms’s sonata forms, the formal divisions of the movement are difficult to distinguish.

The two middle movements blend together quite well, as both are in A flat major. The first, marked Andante un poco Adagio, is a kind of Nocturne in a ternary form, though its middle section is closely derived from the opening melody. The following movement is an Intermezzo in the style of an Austrian Ländler. The final movement, a Vivace rondo in F major, is full of energy and youthfulness, even though Brahms was sixty-one years old when he composed it.       Joseph DuBose