Johannes Brahms

Brahms’s connections with Wigmore Hall run deep; though he himself never performed at the Hall, two of his close friends and fellow musicians made several appearances here in the years after the Hall opened. In 1905, Clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld performed the clarinet sonatas Brahms had been inspired to write for him, and the following year appeared in a performance of the Clarinet Trio as part of a Brahms series put on by Joseph Joachim, who performed here as a soloist and as part of his eponymous string quartet. Elisabeth Leonskaja and Jonathan Plowright are among the artists continuing this long-standing relationship today, with a focus on Brahms’s piano and chamber music and a ‘Brahms Plus’ series putting the composer in context alongside his major contemporaries and predecessors.