Johannes Brahms 1833-1897 In 1890 Brahms decided to stop composing, however a meeting with the virtuoso clarinettist Richard Mühlfeldt (1856-1907) changed his mind. While attending a concert held by his friend Hans von Bülow in Meiningen, Brahms heard Mühlfeldt play and was very impressed by his artistry, that he decided to write several compositions for him. Mühlfeldt was selftaught as a clarinetist, starting out as a violinist. He had offers from orchestras of St.Petersburg and Boston, but remained in the Court Orchestra of Meiningen. He participated at the ”Festspiele in Bayreuth”. Brahms called him ”Meine Primadonna” and they made friends. The 2 sonatas op.120 were composed during the summer 1894 in Bad Ischel. Brahms asked Mühlfeldt to come an visit him: ” ... bring your B-flat clarinet and be not in a hurry because I have written two modest small sonatas with piano accompaniment. ”(?) They premiered the sonatas in Vienna 1895 and after that played concerts in major cities throughout Austria and Germany. Despite Brahms modest desciption of the sonatas, we consider the clarinet being almost a third hand of the pianist, an extension that is able to sustain and colour the sound in ways which the piano on its own is not able to do. Robert Schumann 1810-1856 Schumann composed three duos for wind instruments and piano: Adagio -Allegro Op.70 for horn, Fantasiestücke Op.73 for clarinet and 3 Romanzen Op.94 for oboe. The Fantasie-stücke were at first called Soiréestücke an idea that he abandoned. The pieces are almost in a three part liedform each ending with a coda. Perhaps was Schumann even more pianistically in his writing than Brahms and also demanded the clarinetist to play almost constantly throughout the piece.The work was written for the clarinettist J.K Kotte, a member of the Dresdner Staatskapelle och was premiered in Leipzig 1859. © Stefan Harg Clara Schumann 1819-1896 Pianist, composer and teacher. At the age of 11 her father Friedrich Wieck helped her to lessons in harmony and counterpoint and later she studied composition with Heinrich Dorn. Nine years later she wrote in her diary: ”A woman is not allowed to wish to compose music, at this time nobody has, why should I be chosen?” The style of Clara´s music is romantic and lyric with a strong personal style of harmonic, which stresses the dramatic undertone in her music. Her production contains: several charateristic pieces for piano, 1 piano concerto in a-minor (composed at the age of 17, 9 years before Roberts concerto in a-minor), 2 chamber music pieces , songs/lieder and cadenzas for Mozart- and Beethoven piano concertos. © Katarina Ström-Harg