Chamber Music Matinee 3

Probably the most famous period in the history of Western music, the First Viennese School spans the years around 1800 with Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn as the shining triumvirate. One hundred years later, Vienna again became the centre of a highly innovative musical style. Musicologists call this style the Second Viennese School, based around the invention of the twelve-tone technique by Arnold Schönberg. This was successfully developed by his exceptionally talented pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, bringing Vienna once more into the heart of European musical life. Forty years earlier, Johannes Brahms from Hamburg decided to make his mark in Vienna, which he managed with great success. However, he was regularly drawn back to his German homeland, for example in 1891, to Meiningen in southern Thuringia. There he met the clarinettist of the court orchestra, whose playing made such a great impression on him, that although he did not actually intend to compose anything else, he in fact wrote two clarinet sonatas, a clarinet trio and a large-scale clarinet quintet for him, all of which are masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire.