Mozart - Brahms - Clarinet Quintets - David Shifrin & Emerson String Quartet

I would like to dedicate this one to Ice.



















Recorded in 1996 and 1997

David Shifrin, clarinet

Emerson String Quartet
Philip Setzer, violin
Eugene Drucker, violin
Lawrence Dutton, viola
David Finckel, violoncello

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet in A major, KV 581
1. I Allegro [9:18]
2. II Larghetto [6:39]
3. III Menuetto - Trio I / II [6:45]
4. IV Allegretto con Variazioni I-IV - Adagio - Allegro [9:01]

Johannes Brahms - Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet in B minor, op. 115
5. I Allegro [13:03]
6. II Adagio [11:08]
7. III Andantino - Presto non assai, ma con sentimento [4:49]
8. IV Con moto - Un poco meno mosso [8:51]

Download: Part I --- Part II --- Part III --- Part IV


"Towards the end of his life, in 1891, exactly one century after the death of Mozart, Brahms posed the question of how to pay homage to Mozart without surrendering one's own individuality. He selected a genre - the clarinet quintet - that belonged to Mozart. The opening theme of Brahms's slow movement yearns for Mozart, and though unable to find him, does not cease its longing (Example 24.12).

















It is the image of a restless romanticism questing for what has now become a classical ideal. Brahms's theme appropiates the opening three notes of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, blocking the theme, and refusing to allow it to continue, let alone to come to rest. In the end, Brahms knew, we cannot reach Mozart, we can only hope to come nearer to him.
It remains to let the theme continue, as Mozart did (Example 24.13)."
















Maynard Solomon - "Mozart" (Pimlico, 1996), p. 381-2