In the final years of his life, Brahms composed a sequence of major works whose unforgettable intensity embraces the spare. Historically, this particular resurgence of his creative energies was the consequence of an unexpected meeting with the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, for whom Brahms was to compose four crucial, brilliant works between 1891 and 1894, including the two Sonatas, op.120. A little later, in 1895, he re-imagined them for the viola, an instrument which would enhance their more melancholic flavours.

Born not far from Paris in 1985, Paul Zientara savours above all the autumnal Brahms, serene and tranquil with its ceaselessly renewed stream of lyricism. And so, he assembled his first genuine album, produced by Beau Soir Productions, the organisation created by Renaud Capuçon to promote and encourage a new generation of highly talented musicians, around these two magical scores.

Four shorter pieces, including the Scherzo from the collaborative F-A-E (‘Frei aber einsam’) Sonata and the song in the form of a prayer, Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer, enrich the programme, in which he is joined by the pianist Arthur Hinnewinkel.

Former students at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, where they met and where they discovered these sonatas, Paul Zientara and Arthur Hinnewinkel here offer us an outpouring of poetic treasures.

Beautifully recorded, the young viola player bewitches us with his intense yet soaring sound, a subtle fusion of honeyed yellow and light ochre tone colours. His phrasing, shaped with the suppleness of a genius but also deeply respectful of the harmonic richness beloved of the composer, is complemented by the truly captivating precision and clarity of the excellent Hinnewinkel’s contrapuntal playing, his touch radiating a generous tenderness. An unforgettable F minor Sonata indeed.

This recording’s discrete beauties, born of an almost brotherly understanding between two wonderful chamber musicians, are an ode to friendship, the same sentiment that not so long ago inspired Brahms when he wrote for Mühlfeld, his beloved colleague.