Currents

Guillermo Laporta, the ensemble's flutist, opens with Brown Leaves Moving. Then the first movement of Brahms's A minor Trio, Op. 114, written in 1891 after he had already put his retirement in writing: "it is high time to stop," he told his publisher Simrock the year before. Hearing the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld undid that. Simrock's title page offers "clarinet (or viola)", and Brahms had tried the piece that way in rehearsal, with Joseph Joachim on viola. That is the version heard here.

Laminar flow is the term in fluid dynamics for movement in smooth parallel layers, with no mixing between them: the opposite of turbulence. Eric Moe borrows it for a short, unhurried piece dedicated to the composer Pablo Ortiz. Clara Schumann follows with the Three Romances, Op. 22, finished in 1853 and dedicated to Joachim, the same violinist Brahms would later put on viola. Joachim reported from the Hanover court that the king had been left in "ecstasy" by them. They are among her last works: Brahms arrived at the Schumanns' door that September; Robert suffered a catastrophic breakdown the following February, and Clara composed very little original music thereafter.

Robert Schumann's E-flat Piano Quartet closes, sketched in a single week in October 1842 and copied out by the end of November; Clara gave the first public performance at the Leipzig Gewandhaus two years later. Its slow movement ends with the cellist tuning the bottom C string down a whole step to B-flat, to hold a pedal note beneath the final bars that the instrument cannot otherwise reach - "an ingenious piece of scoring," wrote Basil Smallman, "but not likely to win much favour with the participating performer."