Mozart Clarinet Concerto

When it comes to a piece like the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, a few words or phrases regularly come up: the concerto is described as "mellow" or Mozart's "swan song," but most often it is described as "perfect." Such a perfect piece as Mozart's Clarinet Concerto must have been hugely popular during Mozart's lifetime, right? It must have been played all over, by all the virtuoso clarinetists of the day. Well, that is not even close to the case. At the age of 35, Mozart was kind of old news in the economically depressed, repressed, and censored city of Vienna in 1790. There were very few concerts during this period, and Mozart's popularity had waned severely. The clarinet concerto, one of a wealth of brilliant (and yes, perfect) pieces Mozart wrote in the final year of his life, was performed once by the man for whom Mozart wrote it, Anton Stadler, before Mozart's death, but the location and the program of that concert are forgotten. The manuscript of the concerto is lost, which means we actually don't know a lot about it, especially considering it wasn't actually written for a standard clarinet, but for a basset clarinet (we'll get to that later). The piece was written just about two months before Mozart's death and was his last completed work, though there's absolutely no evidence that Mozart knew he was dying when he wrote it. All in all, there's actually a lot of mystery surrounding this perfect piece, and yet, when we hear the luminous music that Mozart wrote, all of this falls away. There is truly a kind of perfection to this music, a golden quality that is inescapable. There is no clarinet concerto that is performed more often or more recorded, and it remains a perennial favorite for clarinetists and orchestras around the world. Today, on this Patreon-sponsored episode, we'll talk about all these mysteries surrounding this concerto, Anton Stadler, the basset clarinet, and of course, the wonderful music itself, though, as always, Mozart sometimes defies description. Join us!