In 2023 we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Max Reger, a composer whose music brought a new flowering of Late Romanticism in the first decade of the 20th century, as has been demonstrated by pianist Markus Becker. Music critic Eleonore Büning once described Becker as a “painter of intelligent musical portraits of the soul”, in a review of Becker’s complete recording of Reger’s piano works, which caused a sensation. Now, with his two chamber music partners Sharon Kam and Alban Gerhardt, he presents two gems from Reger’s immense, highly varied chamber music output. Reger’s Clarinet Sonata was inspired by previous works in the same genre from the pen of Johannes Brahms, who fell in love with the clarinet during his late phase and wrote several major works for the instrument in rapid succession. Brahms’s Clarinet Trio op. 114 thus provides a striking, mesmerizing finale for the recital in Mülheim, marking Markus Becker’s 10th appearance at the Ruhr Piano Festival.