Brahms: Cello Sonatas / Clarinet Trio

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JOHANNES BRAHMS
Brahms: Cello Sonatas / Clarinet Trio
Paul Watkins (cello) Ian Brown (piano) Michael Collins (clarinet)

[ Chandos / CD ]

Release Date: Monday 14 July 2014

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Performing Brahms's cello sonatas and Clarinet Trio, Paul Watkins here presents three enduring masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire. He is joined by two musicians of the highest calibre, the pianist Ian Brown, his established duo partner, and the clarinettist Michael Collins.

Himself an accomplished player in his youth, Brahms was passionate about the cello and wrote many glorious parts for the instrument. However, he had difficulty writing his Cello Sonata No. 1, eventually destroying an Adagio to leave the three-movement work we know today. Completed in 1865, it is somewhat reserved in character, with an elaborate fugal finale that, looking backwards, pays homage to Bach. A little over twenty years later, in 1886, Brahms composed his Cello Sonata No. 2, the expansive form and extrovert character of which stand in graphic contrast to the first. The writing also shows a more adventurous approach to the cello, heard right from the outset in the leaping, passionate theme with which the first movement opens.

One of his last works, the Clarinet Trio was written after Brahms had decided to retire from composition. It was the artistry of Richard Mühlfeld that inspired him to return to composition and write a series of works for the clarinet, considered some of the supreme masterpieces in the instrument's repertoire.

"Collins, Watkins and Brown play as a proper, instinctive ensemble, well tailored in phrasing, unanimous in their attack and architectural finesse, and mellifluous in their shaping of Brahms's melodic and harmonic richness." The Telegraph, 17th July 2014 ****

"The late sonata's expansive mood and grand sonorities have made it the more popular of the two - it was a favourite of Casals. Yet the melancholy early work doesn't deserve its comparative neglect. Nor does the Clarinet Trio, as this expressive performance by three of Britain's finest musicians reminds us." Sunday Times, 20th July 2014

"by stretching and releasing phrases without corrupting the basic pulse, lightening or darkening notes without damaging timbres, Collins shares with his colleagues an individual impulse to the music...A penetrating interpretation." (Gramophone)

Tracks:

Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114
Cello Sonata No. 1 In E Minor, Op. 38
Cello Sonata No. 2 in F major, Op. 99