Clarinet Concerto (Mozart)

• 1. Introduction

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  Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, was completed in October 1791, just weeks before its composer died. It was his second to last finished work. The concerto was written for a single performer, Anton Stadler, on an instrument so rare and custom-made that it would eventually disappear from use entirely. When the manuscript was later lost, unknown arrangers quietly rewrote the solo part so ordinary clarinets could play it. For nearly two centuries, that altered version was all anyone heard. The questions worth asking are these: what did Mozart actually write, and why does it matter so much that we find out?

• 2. Stadler and the Basset Clarinet

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  Anton Stadler was not simply Mozart's preferred clarinettist. He was a close friend, a virtuoso, and one of the inventors of the instrument Mozart wrote for: the basset clarinet. The basset clarinet extended the standard clarinet's range downward, reaching a written low C where ordinary instruments stopped at a written E. Stadler was also an expert player of the basset horn, and Mozart had been composing for that instrument as early as 1783. By 1787 he was writing for the basset clarinet specifically, and the instrument appeared in the instrumentation of Cosi fan tutte in 1789. By early October 1791, Mozart was in Prague and wrote to his wife that he had finished "Stadler's rondo" -- the third movement of the concerto. He then handed the completed manuscript to Stadler in person. The basset clarinet fell out of use after Stadler's death, and none of the original instruments from his era survived.

• 3. A Lost Manuscript

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  No autograph score of the concerto exists. The only fragment written in Mozart's hand is an earlier sketch for basset horn in G, catalogued as K. 584b/621b, which dates from late 1789. It is nearly identical to the corresponding section in the published score, though only the melody lines are fully written out. After Mozart died, the manuscript that Stadler had received could not be found. Mozart's widow told a publisher that Stadler had either lost it, pawned it, or had it stolen from him. By 1801, three separate publishing houses -- Andre, Sieber, and Breitkopf and Hartel -- had each released their own edition, all with the solo part adapted for a standard clarinet. Those three editions became the standard performing versions for more than a century. A reviewer in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung objected at the time, arguing that Mozart's original should have been published with the alterations shown in smaller notes as optional alternatives.

• 4. The Reconstruction Movement

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  On the 28th of June 1951, in Prague, the Czech clarinettist Josef Janoous gave the first modern performance of a reconstructed version, built by the Czech composer Jiri Kratochvil, who lived from 1924 to 2014. Janoous used a Selmer A clarinet fitted with a basset lower joint, with four basset keys operated by the right thumb, mirroring how historical instruments worked. In 1968, the Swiss clarinettist Hans Rudolf Stalder performed a reconstruction made in collaboration with Ernst Hess in Augsburg, Germany. He then made the first recording of the concerto on a basset clarinet, with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, in September 1968, using an instrument built at the F. Arthur Uebel factory in Markneukirchen, Saxony. Further reconstructions followed from Hans Deinzer in 1970 and Alan Hacker in 1974. Hacker had remarked in 1969 that if Mozart's original manuscript had been published, manufacturers would have made and sold basset clarinets by the thousands. Since 1984, the clarinettist Sabine Meyer has used a basset clarinet in A made by Herbert Wurlitzer to perform the work. The two versions published by Barenreiter and Schott became the most frequently performed reconstructions. In 2023, Richard Haynes undertook a further project: rewriting the score in G major using the fragment K. 621b, and since April 2024 he has been performing it on a basset horn in G built for him by Jochen Seggelke.

• 5. The Music Itself

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  The concerto runs about 29 minutes across three movements. The first movement, Allegro, is in sonata form and is the longest at around 12 minutes. It opens with a joyful orchestral ritornello, which soon breaks into a cascade of sixteenth notes in descending sequence played by the violins and flutes. When the clarinet enters at bar 57, it repeats the opening theme with ornamentation before traversing the full range of the instrument. A notable feature is a passage where the soloist accompanies the orchestra with an Alberti bass over the first closing theme. The development explores F minor and D major, with the cellos and bassoons holding suspensions over staccato strings before the recapitulation. The second movement, Adagio, is in D major and runs in rounded binary form. Its 16-bar main theme is stated by the solo clarinet, then taken up by the orchestra. The B section draws on the chalumeau -- the lowest register of the instrument -- including, in the reconstructed version, the basset tones down to written C3. The third movement, Rondo: Allegro, follows a form Mozart developed in his piano concertos, most notably the A major Piano Concerto, K. 488. It runs in an A-B-A-C-A-B-A pattern. The musicologist Colin Lawson has described the C section, which starts in F minor, as containing one of the most dramatic showcases for the basset clarinet in the entire concerto, featuring spectacular leaps and dialogue between soprano and baritone registers. The scoring for the modern version calls for solo clarinet in A, two flutes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings.

• 6. Recording History

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  The first recording of the concerto was made in 1929 on Brunswick Records, catalogue numbers 20076-8, with Clarence Raybould conducting. That recording was thought lost, but copies were later found in Australian pressings. The first period-instrument recording came in 1973 on EMI, with Hans Deinzer and the conductorless Collegium Aureum. Among later recordings, the Adagio gained wide exposure outside classical circles when it appeared in the film Out of Africa in 1985, with soloist Jack Brymer. Parts of the concerto also appear in The King's Speech from 2010, though only the orchestral sections. The concerto attracted conductors including Herbert von Karajan, who recorded it with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1949 with Leopold Wlach and again with Karl Leister and the Berlin Philharmonic in 1972. Claudio Abbado recorded it twice: with Sabine Meyer and the Staatskapelle Dresden in 1990, and again with Alessandro Carbonare and Orchestra Mozart in 2013. Of all clarinet concertos, the Mozart concerto is by far the most frequently performed, a standing that the 2025 recording by Nicolas Baldeyrou with the Kolner Akademie on Alpha shows no sign of ending.