2 Mozart Clarinet Quintet k581 Largettho Vlad Weverbergh Terra Nova Collective

4 года назад

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Shapeshifter k581
World première recording of the Grande Sonate, by Mozart. A version for clarinet and piano of the famous quintet for clarinet and strings k581.

Terra Nova Collective
Vlad Weverbergh, conductor and basset clarinetAnthony Romaniuk, pianoforte
Guido de Neve & Katalin Hrivnak, violins
Richard Wolfe, viola
Edouard Catalan, cello

The term shapeshifter is familiar to us from science fiction and refers to a being capable of changing its appearance while retaining its identity. We encounter this phenomenon in music too. All down the centuries popular pieces have been copied again and again by other artists, arranged for larger and smaller ensembles, been broken into fragments, and have gone on to live other lives.

Nowadays we talk about covers. Our musical heritage comprises thousands of such historical covers of famous musical pieces. Many of these are splendid music, gems that do show up on the sensors of our contemporary outlook, which tends to regard non-original work as inferior. Even so originality is a quality that only since the Romantic period has been held in high regard and viewed as a touchstone of artistic quality. Prior to that people took a different view. It is worth noting that modern philosophers have also asked what originality effectively entails.

Terra Nova Collectief Antwerpen wants to draw the music lover’s attention to these forgotten arrangements, by putting the original work together with the historical arrangement in a single concert programme. This gives you the chance not only to discover something new but also to experience a famous masterpiece from an unfamiliar perspective.
The arrangement for clarinet and piano La Grande Sonate pour le piano-forte avec accompagé d’un (sic) Clarinette ou Violon obligé was published under this somewhat defective title in Vienna by Artaria in 1809. The name of the arranger is unknown and it is unclear what the source for the transcription was. After some years alternative arrangements became available for string quartet, flute quintet with two violas and for piano duet.

Mozart’s basset clarinet

The instrument used for this cd recording and featured on the cover is called a basset clarinet: a special clarinet for whom Mozart composed.
The basset clarinet is a clarinet in C, B♭, or A whose range is extended downward to written C, similar to the basset horn. It includes thumb keys to extend the lowest notes as found on the bassoon and basset horn. It is interesting to musicians today because it is used in three works by Mozart: the B♭ basset
clarinet obbligato solo in “Parto, parto ma tu ben mio” from La Clemenza di Tito (1791) and the A basset clarinet parts in both the Quintet for clarinet and strings, k581 (1789) and the Concerto for clarinet and orchestra, k622 (1791). These works were written for Anton Stadler, a clarinetist employed in 1781 in the
Vienna Court orchestra and Harmonie or wind band. Beginning in 1782
Theodor Lotz of Pressburg made clarinets for Anton Stadler and his brother, Johann, also employed by the Court. Lotz became the Vienna Court Instrument maker in 1785 and worked with Anton Stadler to construct his invention: an extended range clarinet in 1788, now called the basset clarinet.

Lotz’ first basset clarinet of 1788 had “two deeper tones than the ordinary clarinet”, for low D and C. In 1790, Lotz modified and redesigned the basset clarinet to include a chromatic low or basset range of E♭, D, C♯, and C. Shortly, after the first performance of Mozart’s Concerto in Prague in 1791, Stadler took a leave to tour with his basset clarinet in various European cities from 1791 to 1794. Three programs for his 1794 Riga concerts feature an engraving of a straight shaped basset clarinet with a curved barrel, L-joint at the bottom with a resonance hole, globular bell pointing toward the player, two ridges defining a center section, and large resonance hole.
Eric Hoeprich built the first modern replica in 1994 after the engraving from Stadler’s March 21, 1794 concert announcement in Riga.
On the list of debtor’s remaining after Lotz’s death in 1792 are “2 neu erfundene Pasklarinet” (two newly invented bass clarinets) for which Stadler owed Lotz the large sum of 162 gulden.

Later in the 19th century, basset clarinets were occasionally made for virtuosi clarinetists and some were made for players in wind bands. In 1951, interest and scholarship in reconstructing the clarinet parts in Mozart’s Concerto and Quintet sparked the basset clarinet’s revival. This led to the first modern
clarinets with basset clarinet extensions during the 1950s and 1960s; the first reproduction basset clarinets during the 1970s; and the first modern basset clarinets manufactured by all the major clarinet makers during the 1980s to the present.
Albert R. Rice

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