Brahms
T. Lonquich, Quartetto Indaco

Tommaso Lonquich, clarinet

Quartetto Indaco

Eleonora Matsuno, violin

Ida Di Vita, violin

Jamiang Santi, viola

Cosimo Carovani, cello

J. Brahms (1833–1897)

Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115

“Goodnight elixir” offered by Bar Caravatti

40’ | Ticket €18

Late at night, in the Rotonda di San Lorenzo, one of the absolute peaks of chamber music comes to life: the Clarinet Quintet in B minor by Johannes Brahms.

In 1890, Brahms confided to his publisher that he considered his creative life to be over; he had even begun drafting his will. What changed everything was his encounter with the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, an extraordinary musician whom the composer heard in Meiningen. “One cannot play the clarinet more beautifully than Mühlfeld does,” he wrote with enthusiasm. From that meeting began a new creative chapter, producing the final and most elevated works of Brahms’s late period. Among them is the Quintet on tonight’s program: a work in which melancholy and serenity, memory and surrender coexist. The clarinet never stands apart as a mere soloist but is constantly woven into the strings in an intimate, densely contrapuntal dialogue. Each movement seems permeated by an awareness of time passing: themes return transformed, shadows dissolve into sudden lyrical openings, and the writing becomes increasingly essential without losing emotional depth.

The extraordinary range and depth of feeling contained in this work make it a true landmark of chamber music and a kind of spiritual testament of the composer. Brahms thought he had already said everything he needed to say; yet he still had this left: one of his most intimate, human, and essential masterpieces.