I recently posted a review of Marie Ross’s recording of Brahms’s Clarinet Sonatas and Trio, and now World Literature Today published my profile of Marie Ross where she talks about her journey to this recording and the problems she’s encountered on the way. She’s got such a fascinating story to tell.

Until recently, Ross says, musicians studying historic performance overlooked the late Romantic period. Brahms died in 1897, removed from our time by only a few generations of players, and many believe that contemporary performing practices and instruments have only Brahms Brahms wrote his four clarinet pieces for chamber ensembles late in his career, in 1891 and 1894, having already declared his intention to retire from composing. He was inspired to write these works after hearing Richard Mühlfeld, a clarinetist whose sound he found particularly warm and expressive. To approach Mühlfeld’s sound, Ross found clarinets made by a legendary German maker, Oskar Oehler. She uses two instruments, one that was made in the 1890s, and the other in 1905. The latter instrument has ties to a musician in the same orchestra in which Mühlfeld also had played. Mühlfeld, Ross says in the liner notes to her CD, is on the record for recommending Oehler clarinets.

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/cultural-cross-sections/marie-rosss-brahms-olga-zilberbourg

Read the review online, and buy the CD. Buying the music is the best way to support our recording artists!