Brahms & Reinecke: Works for Clarinet & Piano

This new Chandos release finds Michael Collins performing Johannes Brahms’s and Carl Reinecke’s clarinet sonatas with the pianist Michael McHale. Inspired by clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, Brahms’s two late clarinet sonatas are works of moving and dramatic intensity. Of Carl Reinecke’s prodigious but little-heard output, the chamber music has perhaps proved relatively more durable. Both his Sonata Undine, op. 167 and the Introduzione ed Allegro appassionato, op. 256 refer to works by Schumann, respectively Kreisleriana and the Concertstück for piano and orchestra, op. 92.