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Every time I ask about the knee, I think I might have to duck behind the nearest piece of furniture. I'm glad it's getting better.

Lumbar issues are hell. I have them on occasion, even though the x-rays and bone scan showed nothing amiss.

Hope things feel better.

Good to see ya! I've been busy busy busy with Brahms, which ends tonight.

Starting next week, I'll be listening to Seattle Chamber Music Festival concerts on Seattle's KING-FM thanks to the miracle of the Internet. On Friday nights in July, I'll have my eye on the Canteen thread but my ear on my computer speakers.

Her name was Alice Barbi, and she sang like an angel. Unlike many of the other singers who had captivated Johannes Brahms, this Barbi doll was a superb musician and understood how to shape a song. She made a splash singing Schubert and Schumann, and then she turned her attention to the songs of Brahms. Old Jo was smitten, and so was Alice. They spent time together walking around town and dining at cafes in the Prater. Despite the fact that Jo was 57 and Alice was only 28, Jo’s friends suspected he had finally proposed. However, it all turned on the matter of children: Alice wanted them and Jo didn’t.

Brahms had an effect on another career. One night he heard Gustav Mahler conduct Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, and he was absolutely stunned. He spent hours afterward talking shop with Mahler, and he procured Gus a series of operatic appointments, culminating in the Vienna State Opera, which Mahler thoroughly reformed and improved.

In January 1891, Jo journeyed to Meiningen for the arts festival, and he was amazed at the playing of clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld in two chamber works for clarinet by Weber and Mozart. This opened Brahms to the possibilities of the clarinet, and for his 1891 summer at Bad Ischl, he composed two clarinet chamber works. So much for retirement! The second, a quintet for clarinet and strings, is one of the monuments of the chamber repertory, a true five handkerchief piece. It’s a song of love, a song of regret, and there is nothing else quite like it.

It opens with a melisma on the strings, and first notes on the clarinet are bittersweet and haunting. At 1:41, the second subject in D Major provides some happiness, but even there the taste is of some long ago sadness. Following the repeat of the exposition, the development at 6:13 moves into a world of struggle, resolving into a sense of kind of sad peace at 9:21 at the recapitulation. At 11:59 there is a tortured cry from the heart that resolves into peacefulness, but with a sense of sadness and desolation at the end.

Brahms: Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in B minor, Op. 115, first movement

The slow movement changes the mood only slightly, with just a tiny flicker of happiness. In the middle section, Brahms writes a passage for gypsy clarinet that is haunting and full of grief. The return to the opening section at 7:16 is even a bit sweeter and more welcome despite the shadows. It ends with a sense of bliss in the major.

second movement

The third movement is a short intermezzo that provides a feeling of happiness to dispel what has gone before. The middle section has a sense of disquiet that resolves peacefully into the opening theme.

third movement

Brahms sets the finale as theme and variations, and he writes exactly one more variation than Mozart did in his quintet for the same group of instruments. The variation beginning at 6:30 sounds a bit like “Sunrise Sunset”. At the end, Brahms brings back the opening from the first movement to bring the work full circle. The final notes are bleak and desolate.

fourth movement

The premiere in Berlin in late 1891 was a tremendous success, for everyone understood that this was a work of the heart. The Vienna premiere in early January 1892 was even bigger and brought the house down.