Sickness and death bind together two of Mozart’s finest works –
perhaps his most intense and inspired Concerto (tonight performed by
the brilliantly virtuosic son of Northampton, Harry Michalas), and
certainly his greatest choral achievement, the ‘Great’ Mass in C
minor.
At the time he composed the ‘Great’ Mass in C minor, Mozart
would have been just twenty-two years old. He was engaged to
Constanze Weber. It’s true to say that he had pursued her sister,
Aloysia, first, and then switched camps when rebuffed, but no
matter. Suddenly, though, Constanze became ill. Illness, it need not
be said, was a far greater concern in the eighteenth century and
everything was done to bring her to health again.
When she finally did recover, Mozart vowed to write a Mass in thanks
for her life. This he did, despite history having deprived us of a
couple of major chunks of it – parts of the Credo and
Sanctus are not intact. The story of its première, at the
Salzburg court of Archbishop Colleredo seems romantic, if not least
for one aspect: singing the female solo was Constanze Weber herself.
The Clarinet Concerto in A was completed in 1791, the year of
Mozart’s death, and it marked his farewell to instrumental music. It
was also the first clarinet concerto to be written by a major
composer – except that Mozart did not write it for the clarinet at
all.
The clarinet was not yet in existence, and its immediate predecessor
the basset clarinet was just emerging as an orchestral and solo
instrument. The inventor of the basset clarinet, and its leading
virtuoso, was Mozart’s friend and fellow Mason, Anton Stadler, for
whom Mozart had written the Clarinet Quintet. “Never,” wrote
Mozart to Stadler, “would I have thought that a clarinet could be
capable of imitating the human voice as deceptively as it is
imitated by you. Truly your instrument has so soft and lovely a tone
that nobody with a heart could resist it.”
The concerto was written in Vienna sometime between the end of
September and the beginning of October 1791. The completed score was
sent off to Stadler in Bohemia and it received its first performance
at Stadler’s benefit concert in the Prague Theatre on October 16,
1791. Seven weeks later, Mozart was dead.Programme:
Northampton Bach Choir
National Festival Orchestra
Soprano: Philippa Boyle
Contralto: Esther Brazil
Tenor: Christopher Trenholme
Bass: Peter Foggitt
Clarinet: Harry Michalas
Conductor: Lee Dunleavy
Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A, K 622 (30’)
Mozart ‘Great’ Mass in C minor, K 427 (60’) |
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