The new term

Welcome.

The new term/year starts at 2.oo pm on Wednesday 23 September in the Dylan Thomas Centre.

This term we will concentrate on the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, generally acknowledged to be one of the composer’s best chamber works and one of the great works of the late nineteenth century. It will be central to an exploration of mode, key and mood: does the choice of key, in this case b minor (the key of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, Borodin’s Second Symphony, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, Bach’s Suite for Flute and Strings BWV 1067, Liszt’s Piano Sonata, etc.) influence the emotional content of a piece?
We will also look at the fairly brief but successful history of the clarinet quintet and consider the influence on Brahms of Hungarian music .

Useful links:
Recordings:
The recording I shall be using (Karl Leister & the Amadeus Quartet) is available for download from Amazon for £7.99, or in CD format for £9.29 – it’s coupled with Gervase de Peyer’s performance of the Mozart quintet.

• Amazon lists 26 MP3 recordings for download at prices from £3.99 upwards: Brahms Quintet
  


• If you feel like exploring Brahms’ chamber music in depth there’s a box set (including the Leister performance) of the quartets, quintets and sextets for £23.98 here.
  

Scores:

• The study score (Eulenberg) is available from Boosey Hawkes for £4.50: Score
  
• A free download of the score is available at Free score (but you'll have to either bring your laptop with you to class or print out the music).
  
  Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as “fair use”, for the purpose of study, and critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of the copyright owner(s).