Intimate Voices Returns

The nickname deserves a brief explanation. Mozart did compose a work while bowling with friends, but it was not this one. A week earlier he had composed a set of duets for horns, and on that manuscript he had written "Vienna 27 July 1786 while playing skittles." Somehow "Kegelstatt" got appended to this Clarinet Trio. There is no evidence that Mozart gave any nickname to the K. 498 trio; the moniker Kegelstatt first appears ascribed to it in Ludwig von Köchel's 1862 thematic catalogue of Mozart's music. Accurate or not, the nickname captures something true about the work's origins. It is, as the musicologist Alfred Einstein noted, a work of intimate friendship and love, written to be enjoyed by friends playing together at home.

Mozart composed the Trio for Franziska von Jacquin, one of his best piano pupils, and wrote the clarinet part for his good friend Anton Stadler, for whom he would also write his Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto. The viola part he wrote for himself. Most likely the Trio was first performed at the Jacquin home, with Franziska at the piano, Mozart on the viola, and Stadler on the clarinet. Three friends, an evening, and music written for the precise combination of instruments and personalities in the room.

Unusually, Mozart begins with a first movement Andante rather than an Allegro, and while the movement is in sonata form, Mozart develops just one theme, achieving unity through subtle elaborations, instrumental interplay, and an ornamental turn that recurs throughout. A sprightly Menuetto follows, with a contrasting trio section of considerable charm, before the finale, a set of variations on a graceful theme, brings the work to a warm and unhurried close. Throughout, the three instruments are treated as genuine equals, none dominating, all three in constant and affectionate conversation.

Max Bruch is known to most audiences through his Violin Concerto No. 1 and the Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra, both written early in a long career. His most well-known chamber work, however, is the Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano, composed for his son Max Felix, who was just beginning his career as a professional clarinettist at the time. Bruch was seventy-two years old when he wrote them. A year later he wrote a concerto for the same combination of instruments, also for his son. They are among the last substantial works of his life.

The Eight Pieces favour rich, mellow instrumental hues and an autumnal maturity of expression, deeply felt but purged of excess. The clarinet and viola are evenly matched, singing together in duet or conversing in dialogue, while the piano serves largely as accompaniment. Although they comprise a collection of individual miniatures, they are much more than brief character sketches: beautifully scored trios with lyrical melodies, Romantic harmonies, and articulated forms full of passionate expression. Commentators often point out the predominance of minor keys, yet many of the pieces eventually transform their initial melancholy into a kind of resolved, illuminated nobility.

Bruch himself advised against performing all eight in a single concert, but tonight we offer them complete and in sequence. The decision to play all eight is its own statement: this is not a sampling but a full immersion in the world Bruch created for his son. The set moves through a range of moods and characters, from the quiet opening Andante through more agitated and dance-like middle pieces to the fifth, marked Rumänische Melodie, built on an authentic Romanian folk song, before arriving at the final Moderato with its sense of settled, hard-won peace. Heard together, the eight pieces form something closer to a suite than a collection, and the cumulative effect is of a father, near the end of his life, writing music shaped entirely around the sound of his son's playing.