VA - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Clarinet Concerto KV 622, Sinfonia concertante KV 297b (2020)

Unfortunately the original manuscript of the Concerto KV 622 is not anymore extant. None the less we can consult Mozart’s 199 bar sketch for the work, now known as KV 621b. Mozart’s fragment is scored for basset horn in G, which although now obsolete, had been used by the composer in one of his Notturni for three basset horns and two voices. P. Weston says in one of her articles that D. Springer (bohemian basset hornist active in Vienna) owned such instrument and A. Stadler didn’t have it. Whilst the sketch KV 621b remains incomplete, the concerto KV 622 is scored for basset clarinet in A. This type of clarinet, extending to low C, was conceived and developed by Anton Stadler, Mozart’s close friend and clarinet virtuoso of the Viennese court, in conjunction with Theodor Lotz, one of the finest clarinet makers active in eighteenth-century in Vienna.
Mozart dedicated his Clarinet Concerto to A. Stadler, and according to a letter of Mozart’s wife, also gave to Stadler the original manuscript. Two suppositions are currently held regarding the disappearance of this manuscript: Stadler was robbed of his portmanteau which included the manuscript of the concerto and some instruments, or he was forced to pawn it in order to pay his many debts.

The arrival of Herr Stadler playing on his newly invented extended clarinet is documented on a surviving programme for a concert held in Vienna on February 20, 1788 and again in Riga, Latvia, on February 27, 1794. Recently discovered by the american musicologist Pamela Poulin, this Riga document provides convincing evidence that Mozart originally composed his concerto for the Basset Clarinet in A. This instrument was defined on the programme as a Bass-Klarinette and had at first a lower extension of two more tones, D and C.
The Riga programme includes an illustration of Stadler’s instrument, which is of great importance given the lack of surviving instruments of that type pitched in A. From this illustration the noted historical clarinettist Eric Hoeprich has reconstructed his own Basset Clarinet upon which he has recorded KV 622.
It is worth recalling that the term “Basset Clarinet” was coined by the Czech clarinettist/musicologist Jiri Kratochvil in the mid-twentieth century to reflect the instrument’s resemblance of the basset horn. A citation of the new invented Bassettklarinette of the critic Schoenfeld from 1796 is probably referred (according to some musicologists) to the basset horn.
The Mozart Clarinet Concerto was completed in October 1791, premiered in Prague by Stadler a few days after it was finished (never heard live by the composer!) and published almost simultaneously around the year 1802 by Andrè, Sieber and Breitkopf for the standard A clarinet, most likely for commercial reasons. It has been suggested (but not proven) that Andre himself might have been responsible for the arrangement published by his firm.
A very enthusiast review of the Mozart clarinet concerto of 1802 appeared on Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung cited also the passages (but not really all of them) intended by Mozart to be played on the basset clarinet using its peculiar low register. Probably the reviewer had the manuscript of Mozart (or at least a copy of it!). It can be possible that the composer G. F. G. Schwencke was the writer of this review, he was a composer from Hamburg and met A. Stadler when he performed in that city, and he received from him the manuscript which he copied and produced an arrangement of the same concerto in the form of Quintet for piano and strings! The right hand of the piano, in this arrangement, is playing the solo clarinet part of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, but very much ornamented! The Clarinet Concertos in A major KV 622 is very close in its lyricism and even in the shape of its themes and their harmonic content to the A major Piano Concertos KV 414 and KV 488 (as remarked by C. Rosen in his book “The Classical Style”).

Just like the Concerto KV 622, the Sinfonia Concertante KV 297b for four winds and orchestra could be considered a real masterpiece for its stylistic beauty and soloistic use of the winds. Also, like the Concerto KV 622, we don’t have an original manuscript of Mozart, but we do have a letter dated april 5, 1778 of the composer to his father saying that he planned to write a piece commissioned by the parisian impresario Jean Le Gros, director of the Concert Spirituels. Jean Le Gros received from Mozart this work but Mozart unfortunately never kept a copy of it. Mozart had even in mind the soloists who had to perform his composition, all of them members of the well known Mannheim Orchestra: the flutist J. B. Wendlig, the oboist F. Ramm, the hornist J. W. Punto and the bassoonist G. R. Ritter.
The first performance of the Sinfonia Concertante of Mozart was supposed to be performed the 5th of April 1778. It happened that after almost one hundred years had been found a manuscript of this piece with a different instrumentation including the clarinet instead of flute and published in 1886. At this point we are not able to say for sure if Mozart himself thought to make this change. We know however that Mozart was very fond of the clarinet and not so much of the flute. Probably he changed idea, thinking that clarinet could be more effective on the timbrical point of view in the group of the four winds. The piece must be, in my opinion, genuine coming from Mozart’s hands, having many similar harmonic parts with other compositions of his, such as the other beautiful Sinfonia Concertante k 364 for violin, viola and orchestra. Mozart scholar Robert Levin wrote in his large dissertation about this piece that the orchestral parts are spurious, but the solo parts are Mozart’s, and while detailed and fascinating, it still cannot definitively state the work’s origin and course. Nevertheless my opinion is that it is such a beautiful piece that nobody else than Mozart could have conceived it.

Album Notes by Luigi Magistrelli