Ricardo Morales in clarinet recital

When the Philadelphia Orchestra's principal clarinetist Ricardo Morales left for the greener pastures of the New York Philharmonic in 2011, it looked like the beginning of an exodus of the Orchestra's top-drawer players. More losses have followed, and it remains to be seen how long the Orchestra will remain a world-class ensemble in the wake of the drastic salary and personnel cuts finessed by its trip through bankruptcy court last year.

One loss that seemed irretrievable was Morales, who in New York took over the chair of the great Stanley Drucker— perhaps the most coveted wind position in the country. Yet Morales returned to Philadelphia after just a year, apparently homesick.

One swallow does not a summer make, but the return of such a gifted and obviously marketable musician was a ray of sunshine in the murk of the Orchestra's present condition. Morales can't save the Orchestra by himself, but his renewed presence gives it, and its public, a commodity in especially short supply these days: hope.

In Brahms's wake

Of course it would be unfair to place any other burden on Morales than to play as superbly as he did with pianist Natalie Zhu in their January 14 recital at the American Philosophical Society. The literature for clarinet and piano isn't terribly extensive beyond the two Brahms sonatas. Morales chose not to begin with either of these, but instead with the Brahms-influenced Sonata Op. 129 by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, a well-regarded contemporary of Elgar's.

If you were composing music in the generation before World War I, Brahms and Wagner would have been your models. Wagner was the preferred choice of the period's leading lights: Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius, and even (in Pélleas et Mélisande) Debussy. But Brahms, with his greater textural clarity, held more appeal for chamber music composers.

Why, though, program a Brahmsian piece when you can have Brahms himself? There are two answers to this question, one general and the other particular.

Great composers leave epigones in their wake— lesser figures who extend their masters' legacy as tributaries extend the waters of a great river. These figures, if they have sufficient profile of their own, enrich that legacy and provide a continuity that can lead forward as well as refer backward. They're the connective tissue of the musical tradition.

Higdon's missing piece

Stanford's 1911 Sonata is Brahmsian in the best sense: a work of charm, spirit and vitality with a thread of mercurial Irish wit woven through its three movements, each of which ends quite softly and beautifully. It isn't Brahms, but it suitably honors him, and it stands out on its own as well. Particularly in Morales's ravishing performance, it left me wanting to hear it again, and certainly thinking it could make a valuable addition to the repertory.

Jennifer Higdon's 15-minute Sonata (2011) offered some interesting ideas and episodes on a first hearing but seemed a bit tame in the context of her mature style. This gentleness was explained by the after-the-fact discovery that Higdon's piece is a reworking of a 1990 viola sonata. Brahms, of course, made versions of his own clarinet sonatas for viola; in the case of both Higdon and Brahms, the transpositions lay gratefully at hand.

Debussy's First Rhapsody, which followed the intermission, is music of substance despite its brevity, but it's also one of the great showpieces of the clarinet literature. Morales brought it off with gusto and élan, as well as seemingly effortless technical ease.

Pure joy

The program concluded with Carl Maria von Weber's Grand Duo Concertant, Op. 48. For a sense of pure joy in the making of music, this work has few rivals outside of Mozart. An encore followed— Florent Schmitt's Andantino— but for me the Weber was a perfect conclusion to the program.

Natalie Zhu was a fully engaged partner for Morales throughout, with a firm, robust tone and a panache of her own, but the two musicians played their Weber almost as one, tossing phrases back and forth.

Welcome back, pilgrim.