On Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, K.622
Some thoughts upon hearing a lovely performance.
Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K.622, is a radiant piece, and one that is incredibly meaningful to me. The night before last, I was fortunate enough to hear YaoGuang Zhai perform it with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, so I wanted to write a little on the piece and performance.
The Clarinet Concerto was Mozart’s last completed major work, written a month or two before his death in December 1791. It was also his last instrumental concerto; his final piano concerto, K.595, was composed six months earlier. While Mozart’s writing overall is characterized by bel canto melodies, these concertos are both strikingly lyrical and intimate.
The Clarinet Concerto’s flowing quality is not just from the melody, however; as Charles Rosen points out, Mozart dovetails his phrases, allowing the music to “pour forth unimpeded.”1 Where one phrase stops, another has already begun. This is not unique to K.622 (or Mozart), but here it is done with the utmost subtlety and mastery, and the effect is that every part of the music is in service to that beautiful melody “pouring forth.”
The sense of intimacy is done with great subtlety as well; it is joyful, but never bombastic, or even all that dramatic. The Clarinet Concerto bears some aesthetic similarities to another A major work, his Piano Concerto No. 23, K.488, particularly because of the the main theme of the first movement of each begins the same way. But compare the second movements—the heartbreaking Adagio of K.488 is in F♯ minor, but K.622’s is in D major. In contrast to K.488’s sobbing quality, K.622’s Adagio is peaceful, sweet, introspective. Certainly both are quite intimate and personal, but Mozart has demonstrated this in two very different ways.
Many of the major works of the clarinet repertoire were inspired by a particular clarinetist who caught the composer’s attention. In this case, it was Anton Stadler, who was a Viennese clarinet virtuoso and friend of Mozart’s. They were freemasons together, and had a lot in common, like being jokesters and owing people a lot of money. Stadler played on a clarinet of his own design that had a low extension; this is why some of Mozart’s clarinet parts call for an extended range (e.g. the obbligato in “Parto, parto” from La clemenza di Tito, K.621). Nowadays we call this instrument with the low extension a “basset clarinet,” but I feel like that gives it a legitimacy it doesn’t really deserve; in reality, it’s a weird made-up clarinet that Stadler liked to play on, and now it’s a pain in the neck for clarinetists hundreds of years later.
In any case, a decade after Mozart’s death, when the concerto was published, it was in altered form—it had been edited to be playable on a regular clarinet, not just Stadler’s, by bringing the low stuff up an octave. The autograph manuscript is lost; according to Mozart’s widow, Stadler pawned it. So, we don’t know for sure what the original octaves were for a lot of material in the piece, but people generally assume that a lot of the sudden octave leaps would have been in a smooth line. For example, this bit in the third movement:
would be playable on basset clarinet as:
and the latter demonstrates the range of the instrument more nicely, don’t you think?
Further, there’s weird stuff like this (in the finale of the first movement), where you would expect something to be happening in m. 333, instead of just echoing m. 332:
With a basset clarinet, you can bring m. 333 down an octave.
So, that’s what a basset clarinet can do for you!
If you’re interested in hearing the piece played on basset clarinet in a reconstruction of what the original might have sounded like, Sabine Meyer does a good job. Most people just play it on regular clarinet, though, which sounds perfectly fine. My personal favorite recording is with Robert Marcellus, principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra.
On (the) performance
Playing Mozart is an unusual difficulty for anyone. Mozart’s delicate textures and the poise needed for playing in the classical style mean that you need to be extremely accurate, because flaws will be glaringly obvious. Also, everyone knows how Mozart is supposed to sound, and if you diverge from that expectation, it will be over for you.
On top of this, K.622 presents a unique challenge for clarinetists. The Mozart concerto is the pinnacle of the clarinet repertoire: it is the ultimate piece for us. It’s so simple, yet so terrifying. You have a whole group of people who know this piece like they know their own limbs. Every clarinetist has a clear picture of how it ought to sound. It’s on every audition you ever take. Because you play it so much, it becomes more of an action than an auditory experience. You are liable to forget that it’s a piece that you can listen to and enjoy.
Zhai’s performance was lovely overall and technically perfect. But you could hear how much practicing had gone into it. Basically, it sounded tense, particularly the exposition of the first movement, which is the part that gets asked for on every audition and thus is the most familiar to the clarinetist.
My favorite moments in the performance were when he sounded more playful, extraverted, natural. In particular, the second movement really sang. Zhai is a really fine clarinetist, one whom I’ve looked up to for a long time, and I was very happy to hear him perform this wonderful piece.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with a parting gift: Tale Ognenovski (musical genius)’s rendition of the Mozart (with his son Stevan playing drums in the background).
Thanks for reading!
Casey
Charles Rosen, The Classical Style (1997), 260.