Woodwind players are indebted to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) for some of the finest parts of their repertoire, concert- and chamber-scale alike. Like his compositions for clarinet, his oboe quartet, too, was written with a particular interpreter on Mozart´s mind. He was the Munich-based virtuoso oboist, Friedrich Ramm. The composer met him on the occasion of his journey to the court of Karl Theodor, the Elector of Bavaria, who had commissioned from him, for the carnival season of 1781, the opera Idomeneo. Mozart responded with promptitude to the solo instrument´s technical improvements introduced at that time, creating for it a virtuoso part in which the melody rises in pitch up  to high F.

            The Piano Quartet, Op. 60 of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) took a long time to complete. The early stages of its writing – the individual subjects and the harmonic layout – date back to the time of the composer´s residence in the Schumanns´ house. His senior fellow composer, Robert Schumann, whom Brahms admired, was then hospitalized in a mental institution, and the young musician, hopelessly in love with Schumann´s pianist wife, Clara, was there to help out the family. His relationship with Clara, the nature and peripeties of which have since been dealt with in many biographies, was never consummated, notwithstanding which Clara´s character and her art did doubtless inspire a good many compositions written by Brahms. One of them is this quartet, with “Clara´s theme” actually embedded in its writing. It was the kind of passionate affection embodied by Goethe´s Werther that was on Brahms´ mind up to the point of sending his work to the publisher, accompanied by the following note: “The title page should feature the picture of a head, with a pistol pointed at it. I will send you a photograph of myself for this purpose.”

sleeve-note: Dita Hradecká / translation: Ivan Vomáčka