Solo and Duo, Sonata and Fantasy An Evening with Jörg Widmann and Mitsuko Uchida
Thomas May
The clarinet and the piano are such familiar instruments that it can come as a surprise to realize how recently they were introduced. Indeed, it was not until near the beginning of the 18th century— curiously, at roughly around the same time—that both instruments emerged on the scene. Credit for their creation has traditionally been ascribed, respectively, to a woodwind maker from Nuremberg, Johann Christoph Denner, and the Tuscan Keeper of the Instruments for the Medici family, the Paduan Bartolomeo Cristofori. Mozart played a significant role in making the clarinet an integral member of the modern orchestra, though he began implementing the relatively new instrument as part of his full orchestral apparatus only in the 1780s. He likewise established greatly influential models for the use of the clarinet in chamber music. These find an echo in Brahms’s late-in-life fascination with the instrument, a beloved example of which opens this program. While Brahms’s reverence for Classical tradition shapes the Sonata in F minor, the composition also exploits his gift for deriving complex structures from simple ideas, using advanced techniques that point into the musical future. They were admired and closely
