Trio in A Minor, Op. 114 - Piano, Clarinet, and Cello

Johannes Brahms’s late chamber works are surely among the most splendid music ever written for the clarinet. In the last years of his life Brahms seems to have become weary of composing. Fortunately for posterity, in 1891 he met the solo clarinettist of the Meiningen court orchestra, Richard Mühlfeld, whose mellifluous art of performance captivated him and inspired him to new works.

Brahms' Clarinet Trio and Quintet are chronological twins, both having been composed in 1891, first performed the same year, and first published in 1892.  The Trio op. 114 is melancholy and autumnal in character, and is loved by all clarinettists. It is now available from Henle in a revised edition. Brahms’s manuscript of his op. 114 lies in Munich, the home city of G. Henle Publishers. This edtion, published in 2017 and edited by Katharina Loose-Einfalt, includes an extensive preface and editorial endnotes.  The set also includes a viola part that may substitute for clarinet.  The musical text follows that of the New Brahms Complete Edition, and thus guarantees the highest degree of precision and reflects the current state of research.  The pianist Klaus Schilde has added valuable fingerings to this Urtext edition.

See the Dover score of the Clarinet Trio in a book entitled "Complete Piano Trios", reproducing Volume 9 of the Breitkopf Collected Works edition of 1926 (Dover/Alfred 25769x).