Lübeck Philharmonic live vol. 5:

Johannes Brahms (Luciano Berio):
Sonata for clarinet and piano op. 120,1 (clarinet and orchestra)
Gustav Holst:
The Planets

Reiner Wehle, clarinet
Choir and Special Choir of Lübeck Theatre
Philharmonic Orchestra of Lübeck
Roman Brogli-Sacher

SACD hybrid

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)
Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in F Minor op. 120/1
arranged for Clarinet and Orchestra by Luciano Berio
1 Allegro appassionato 8:05
2 Sostenuto ed espressivo 5:04
3 Allegretto grazioso 4:12
4 Vivace 4:54

GUSTAV HOLST (1874–1934)
The Planets op. 32
5 Mars, der Kriegsbringer (Mars, the Bringer of War) 7:43
6 Venus, die Friedensbringerin (Venus, the Bringer of Peace) 8:09
7 Merkur, der gefl ügelte Bote (Mercury, the Winged Messenger) 4:23
8 Jupiter, Bringer der Fröhlichkeit (Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity) 8:17
9 Saturn, der Bringer des Alters (Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age) 9:15'
10 Uranus, der Magier (Uranus, the Magician) 6:02
11 Neptun, der Mystiker (Neptune, the Mystic) 8:30

Gesamtzeit · total 74:10

Johannes Brahms wrote only a few works for clarinet – and all of them came into being in the last years of the composer’s life. The present arrangement of the F-Minor Sonata for clarinet and orchestra is unusual in that it is not merely by a composer who lived in modern times, but by someone who was a decidedly modern composer. Luciano Berio, born in 1925 in Italy, initially started a career as a pianist, and turned to composing after suffering a hand injury. Moreover, he time and again dedicated himself to arrangements – a fact that links him to Brahms. Berio even partially revised his own works, altered or expanded them. In his arrangement of the First Clarinet Sonata, he did not touch the solo part. With regard to his orchestration, he even took into consideration the alternative instrumentation, authorized by Brahms, with viola: whole motifs (mostly in the high woodwinds) are omitted if the solist does not play clarinet. Among the modest additions to the musical material that Berio allowed himself is a short prelude to the first movement in which the orchestra “introduces” itself, so to speak. The arranger also inserted a few measures before the second movement. Otherwise, he practically never impinged upon the musical substance, and in the orchestration even remained relatively close to the instrumentarium that Brahms employed for his own solo concertos.

The Planets is unquestionably one of the most popular pieces of music ever written. Its creator, Gustav Holst, on the other hand, is not a popular composer, and of his works, with the exception of this Planets Suite, almost none are known. It is not a huge oeuvre that he left behind; only a fraction of it has ever appeared in print, and many of the manuscripts of unpublished works were given as presents to friends. Pluto was discovered a few years before Holst’s death – which inspired Colin Mathews to complete the suite in 2000 with “Pluto, the renewer.” Nevertheless, the suite is by all means complete in the seven-movement original form: already in 2006, Pluto was degraded to a dwarf planet.