I want to tell you about a new recording that I came across today:
Brahms:
String Quartet No. 3 in B flat major, Op. 67
Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115
Performed by James Campbell (clarinet), with the New Zealand String Quartet.
Johannes Brahms wrote his String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 67 in 1876 and its largely cheerful qualities culminate in a theme and variations finale of exceptional imagination and mastery of form.
Brahms’ last chamber music was inspired by a great exponent of the clarinet, Richard Mühlfeld, for whom he wrote four works including the Clarinet Quintet. This dazzling masterpiece is notable not only for its underlying elegiac mood, but also for its thematic interrelation and the wide expressive range of the solo instrument.
Here is the beautiful Clarinet Quintet:
