Last breath

Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and Strauss's Four Last Songs. Great composers always seem to write masterpieces on their deathbeds. Here, clarinettist Moïra Michelazzo of Trio Orelia brings together three composers who wrote monumental works for clarinet at the end of their lives.

A few months before he died in 1963, Francis Poulenc wrote one of his most widely performed and celebrated chamber music works: the Clarinet Sonata. None other than Benny Goodman on clarinet and Leonard Bernstein on piano played the posthumous premiere. The work embodies Poulenc's characteristic style and can be seen as the final highlight of his rich career.

Gabriel Fauré's Piano Trio in Re Minor was the culmination of a brilliant career. The arrangement for clarinet, cello and piano adds extra colour to the work without losing sight of the original.

Finally, Trio Orelia performs a work by one of the leading composers of chamber music: Johannes Brahms. He wrote his Clarinet Trio, one of the highlights of his late period, a few years before his death.

Belgian clarinettist Moïra Michelazzo is a passionate chamber musician. Like Portuguese pianist Carlota Carvalho and Dutch cellist Thomas Zonderop, she studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where they founded the Trio Orelia in 2023.

Francis Poulenc, Sonata for clarinet and piano, FP 184
Gabriel Fauré, Trio for clarinet, violoncello and piano, op. 120
Johannes Brahms, Clarinet Trio, op. 114

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with Carlota Carvalho (piano), Thomas Zonderop (cello) and Moïra Michelazzo (clarinet)