There is something about the clarinet that composers discover or perhaps rediscover when they are in their twilight years. Mozart, Brahms, Poulenc, Howells and this episode's master, John Ireland all wrote their final and arguably best chamber works for the clarinet. 

It is hard to imagine that at the start of the 20th century the clarinet was still a relative newcomer to the world of classical chamber music. Frederick Thurston, the finest clarinettist of his generation, first learned the instrument at the start of the new century. His talents soon earned him a place at the prestigious Royal College of London where he was fortunate to take his first steps in the music profession in the afterglow of Brahms' incredible outpouring of chamber works for the instrument. Still Thurston complained that the repertoire for clarinet was dull and uninspiring. These two energies merged between the wars and acted as a catalyst for young British composers to write for Thurston's exquisite mastery of the clarinet buoyed by the lyrical and dramatic possibilities of the instrument as evidenced in the four titanic works Brahms penned in the last three years of his life.

John Ireland was a quiet, deep-thinking man, who had experienced his fair share of life's woes before adulthood. He wrote two early chamber works involving the clarinet; a sextet and a trio but it wasn't until shortly before his retirement that Ireland returned to the clarinet inspired by the artistry of Frederick Thurston. Ireland wrote to Thurston upon completing the Fantasy Sonata:

If you find you really like the work, I shall be happy to dedicate it to you, as it was your playing which led me to write for your instrument. And I have heard some good clarinet playing – Mühlfeld in my early days made a sensation here, and in his time Charlie Draper was remarkable. So I am in a position to appreciate your playing and what it means to music.

And so John Ireland created a ravishing, passionate evocation of the sea and wartime in this Fantasy Sonata. I hope you will enjoy exploring it with me.