Berkeley Ensemble & Simon Callaghan

We end our season with a rare performance of Dohnanyi’s Sextet for violin, viola, cello, clarinet, French horn and piano alongside the Brahms Clarinet Trio and compositions by A level students from Luton Sixth Form College.  The Berkeley Ensemble’s work with young people over the years has been rightly praised and this will be a rewarding opportunity for the student composers of Luton to benefit from their understanding and expertise.

And finally here is a last opportunity to consider the Family Relationships theme of our series in the context of Johannes Brahms.  In 1890 the 57 year old musician suggested that he was ready to retire as a composer.  Perhaps he was metaphysically exhausted, everything he felt deeply enough already expressed – or perhaps his unrequited search for love had finally created an emotional vacuum.  It was the inspirational playing of the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld that lifted the great composer to take up his pen once more to create four last masterpieces of chamber music, the two sonatas, the quintet and this glorious trio.  Its lyricism, its warmth, its humanity are all the legacy of a rich life expressing itself one final time.

Richard Sisson

‘…the high quality of the performances by the Berkeley Ensemble, a malleable group which plays as if it were truly inside the music.’  —Sunday Telegraph

Programme