MusicHaven, they call it. A small historic wooden church in Zaandam. This is where violinists Maria Milstein and Mathieu van Bellen founded a chamber music centre together. But they have left it to come to Muziekgebouw Eindhoven with Georgian viola player Gregory Kovalev, lauded cellist Quirine Viersen and Olivier Patey, solo clarinettist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. On their music stands the two most famous works ever for the combination of clarinet and string quartet.
This music grew out of a love for the clarinet. Mozart already love…
MusicHaven, they call it. A small historic wooden church in Zaandam. This is where violinists Maria Milstein and Mathieu van Bellen founded a chamber music centre together. But they have left it to come to Muziekgebouw Eindhoven with Georgian viola player Gregory Kovalev, lauded cellist Quirine Viersen and Olivier Patey, solo clarinettist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. On their music stands the two most famous works ever for the combination of clarinet and string quartet.
This music grew out of a love for the clarinet. Mozart already loved it a lot when he ran into Anton Stadler - an outstanding clarinetist - one day in Vienna. Mozart would give him not only a clarinet quintet but also a solo concerto. It's 1789 - Mozart, though not yet old, is in the autumn of his life. And quite autumnal is the sound of this mature clarinet quintet. Brahms, too, was in his last stage of life when he wrote his clarinet quintet. 'I will not compose another note' he had declared to his publisher only a year before. Yet what made him pick up the pen again? The playing of a certain Richard Mühlfeld, surely. Suddenly Brahms understood that he had not yet said all he had to say; 'Fräulein Klarinette' exerted too much attraction on him.
