Music Director
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791):
Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra In A Major K. 622
To say that Mozart's last year was an extraordinary one, could very well be an understatement; for what he accomplished during that period a merely ordinary composer might have been proud to have accomplished in years. It was not only the number of works, but their quality and the conditions under which they were composed which makes this period so special. The Kochel Catalog lists thirty-three new compositions written from December, 1790, to the time of his death one year later. His last orchestral work is the Concerto for Clarinet.
It was almost inevitable that Mozart would write a clarinet concerto, for no other major composer championed the new instrument more than Mozart. He wrote for it whenever he could be assured of having good players to perform the parts and, in doing so, forced its acceptance into any orchestra desiring to perform his works. This particular work owes it existence to Mozart's friendship with the great clarinetist Anton Stadler, for whom he had earlier written the Quintet, K. 581,
The concerto was originally sketched as a work in G major for basset horn, a type of alto clarinet pitched five steps below the normal B-flat clarinet. After completing the first movement, Mozart changed his mind and decided in favor of Stadler's "basset clarinet," a standard clarinet with an extension to allow it to play four half-steps lower than normal. Unfortunately, the original manuscript was lost and the work survived only in an edition by the original publisher for the standard instrument with the extreme low notes transposed up one octave. It wasn't until the 1960's that clarinetists began to express interest in again performing the work on an extended instrument. Because this instrument is very rare, most modem performances use the non-extended clarinet in A. Although the work is in no sense a virtuoso showpiece—there is no cadenza, for example—it no doubt proved to be exceedingly demanding for a clarinetist playing an instrument with only five or six keys and can be used as a measure of Stadler's extraordinary abilities. Mozart evidently trusted his friend to the extent that he provided very few dynamic markings, knowing that Stadler's musicianship could provide the necessary shadings. The work was finished in October, 1791.
Beth Bergman Fisher