Aroha String Quartet (l to r: Haihong Liu, Zhongxian Jin, Konstanze Artmann, Robert Ibell) Photo: Supplied
This concert was part of the Wellington Chamber Music Trust’s 2022 series, called 'Clarinet Quintets', with the Aroha String Quartet and featuring clarinetist Rachel Vernon.
The Aroha String Quartet’s website tells us exactly how they feel about this programme: “It has been such a privilege and pleasure to play our Clarinet Quintet programme around the country in the last couple of months. It’s wonderful to work with our friends and colleagues, the NZSO’s Principal Bass Clarinet Rachel Vernon and NZSO First Violinist Anne Loeser. We’ve also been lucky to be able to bring three amazing pieces of music to audiences. In many cases this has been the first live performance people have attended for many months. This has given the concerts a special atmosphere."
The two most famous works for clarinet and string quartet are both born out of friendship. Both Mozart and Brahms, later in life, befriended talented clarinetists and the result of those friendships produced a handful of the greatest music ever written for the instrument. The ensemble also performed an arrangement of Piazzolla’s most famous tango...described as ‘whispered sadness’, called Oblivion.
Mozart Photo: Public Domain
Mozart wrote his clarinet quintet for his friend Anton Stadler, who was a fellow Freemason and a celebrated clarinettist in the Imperial Viennese Court Orchestra. Mozart admired his playing and wrote a number of works for him, including the clarinet concerto and clarinet trio, and he called this work ‘Stadler’s Quintet’. It was first performed in December of 1789 and as far as we know it’s the first clarinet quintet ever. The clarinet had only been around since the beginning of the century and even the string quartet was still quite new. Mozart had been experimenting with quintet form for several years, and in this he reaches the absolute peak of his mature late style.
Astor Piazzolla in concert Photo: Richard Melloul—Sygma/Corbis
Nostalgia and longing are woven into the sound of the clarinet, and it finds a beautiful home in this next arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion. The Argentinian composer wrote this slow tango in 1982, and while we often hear it solely as an instrumental piece, it was written as a song.
The words reflect on a love that is disappearing into the haze of memory...’in a mahogany bar, the violins play again for us, for our song, but I’m forgetting. Brief the times seem, brief the countdown of a night when our love passes into oblivion.’
Brahms monument in Baden-Baden Photo: CC by SA 4.0
It’s a cliché to call the music of Brahms autumnal, yet the word seems to sum up how many feel about the late romantic composer’s music. In the case of the music Brahms wrote for the clarinet at the end of his life, it’s a perfect metaphor.
In the early 1890s, Brahms was tired of composing and was talking of retiring, that is until he happened to hear the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld play, among other things, the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. He was so taken with the man’s playing, he wrote to his lifelong confidant, Clara Schuman about the experience. “Nobody can blow the clarinet more beautifully than Herr Mühlfeld,” he wrote. The two met and promptly became fast friends, and the result was the last four chamber works he wrote: a Trio, two clarinet sonatas and this Quintet.
Nostalgia and serenity pervade this music, like the fading of the last light of the sun.
The Aroha String Quartet are violinist Haihong Liu and guest violinist Anne Loeser, violist Zhongxian Jin and cellist Robert Ibell.
Special thanks to the Wellington Chamber Music Trust who presented this concert as part of their 2022 series.
This concert was recorded and produced for RNZ Concert by David Houston.
