ExclusiveComplete Performance: Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622
【Classical music and nature 古典音樂小站】Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622. This beautiful piece was played by Bruce Edwards. It has Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) and is provided through www.musopen.org.
"A concerto for the clarinet, for Mr Stadler the Elder". This is Mozart's autograph entry in his catalogue of works, announcing the completion of his Clarinet Concerto between late September and mid-November 1791. When he wrote this epoch-making work, the genre was no longer in its infancy. Classical "minor masters" such as Munich's Joseph Michl and Mannheim's Carl Stamitz had already written rewarding clarinet concertos, and the clarinet had been used in concert arias since 1775. Mozart, however, began work on his concerto under two special circumstances: He wrote it for Anton Stadler, the Viennese clarinettist whose soft tone and infinite shadings had given the instrument its soul, and he composed it for a low clarinet. In the early years of solo clarinet literature, the high notes in the treble dominated, whereas Mozart exploited the instrument's full range, favouring the sonorous alto and tenor registers. One need only think of the solos for clarinet and basset horn in the Clemenza di Tito, also composed for Stadler, to realise the extent to which Mozart transformed the clarinet into an idealised singing voice, a wonderfully rich 'mezzo-soprano'.
A draft of the first movement of the Clarinet Concerto in G major for basset horn and orchestra survives. Mozart apparently began the piece as early as 1789 for the low clarinet in G or F invented in Augsburg, the effects of which he had been able to try out with his friend Stadler on several evenings in Vienna. However, for reasons that cannot be reconstructed, Mozart and Stadler later decided in favour of a new version in A major for the A clarinet, albeit with additional low notes, a so-called "basset clarinet". Stadler obviously wanted to use Mozart's concerto to promote this brand-new instrument, which he favoured, in Vienna, and to enjoy the sensation of the low notes to the full. With his "Ribislgesicht" (Mozart's nickname for his friend), Stadler entered the concert hall and played the new concerto and the special instrument, "his" basset clarinet, at a Viennese academy in the spring of 1791.
Mozart's autograph of the concerto has been lost, allegedly in a music case that Stadler had left behind on a journey, which also contained the autograph of Mozart's clarinet quintet. The concerto was first printed for the 'normal' A clarinet, but even in this corrected version it took decades for it to become established in the concert hall. As late as 1830, it was still easier to find "20 good flutists in a medium-sized town than one decent clarinettist", as the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung complained on the occasion of an arrangement of the Flute Concerto in G major.
It would be pointless to dwell on the beauty of the concerto. The synthesis of cantabile, "expressive" passages and "speaking" themes in the solo part is so perfect, the dialogue with the orchestra so subtle, the style of late Mozart so unmistakable, that a description is superfluous. One would have liked to have been there when Anton Stadler took over the wonderful main theme of the first movement from the orchestra, when he played his basset clarinet in the midst of the orchestral violins, when he shone in the passagework of the first movement, or when he integrated himself contrapuntally with the strings in the second theme. His version of the famous Adagio would have been particularly interesting for the embellishments he undoubtedly added to the theme. And one would have liked to have seen Mozart as his friend played the papageno-like rondo theme of the finale.
Source: kammermusikfuehrer.de
From Mozart's letter to his wife Constanze dated 7/8 October 1791, after the completion of the Clarinet Concerto:
"... Now my curriculum vitae; - immediately after your departure I played billiards with Herr: von Mozart /: who wrote the opera with Schikaneder:/ 2 games of billiards. - Then I sold my glasses for 14 ducats - then I had Joseph call the Primus and get me some black coffee, during which I smoked a wonderful tobacconist's pipe; then I played almost the entire Rondó of the Stadtler. ..."
The autograph score has been lost. After Mozart's death, three printed parts were published almost simultaneously in 1801-2 by Breitkopf&Härtel/Leipzig, André/Offenbach and Sieber/Paris. They show a largely identical arrangement for the standard A clarinet without basset register.
The video was shot by Christian and Simone Schlegel in a field near Thun, in Einingen, and Grimsel artificial lake, in Switzerland, and edited by Wenjing Ma.