Conversations

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 enduring 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. 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 three instruments of this combination are well matched in weight and character: the clarinet's singing upper register, the viola's darker, more resinous tone, and the piano binding them together. 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. The title of this concert series takes its name from what happens in these pieces. Three voices, each distinct, each with something to say, listening and responding to one another across the span of eight short movements. Bruch wrote them for a specific voice, his son's, and shaped every note around what that voice could do. Performed complete and in sequence, they form something closer to a sustained conversation than a collection of pieces, and the cumulative effect is of a father, near the end of his life, speaking directly to his son through the only language they fully shared.