...but the music was good too, and so were the stories of old Pierre Tas. One of these was extremely revealing, for he had played several times as a deputy with the Joachim Quartet, the players who had presented to the world all the finest chamber works of Brahms and had done so in the presence of the composer himself. The fascination for me in his description of these occasions was his opinion of the great clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, the player who inspired Brahms to write all his latest and finest works. 'He had a fiery technique, but use both A and B flat clarinet in the middle section of the quintet.' This was remarkable enough, but 'he had a rich, full sound and a very expressive vibrato'. This took my breath away, because although I had been playing with a vocalized vibrato ever since I could remember, this was, at the time, regarded as rather forward-looking to say the least. << less