The second preview event for the Midsummer Mozart Festival was presented in today's Noontime Concerts™ offering at Old St. Mary's Cathedral. While the first concert
had featured the string ensemble, along with two horns, in a
performance of the K. 334 divertimento in D major, the emphasis today
was strictly on clarinets, bassoons, and horns. The provenance of the
first work on the program is a bit perplexing. The program listed it as
the fourth divertimento in K. 299. However, Louis Biancolli's Mozart Handbook lists a collection of five divertimenti with Anhang
numbers 229 and 229a, while the Wikipedia entry has these divertimenti
listed in the sixth revision (1964) of the Köchel catalog as K. 439b.
Both of these entries date the work as having been composed in 1783 in
Vienna. Meanwhile, the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe lists the five divertimenti as K. 439b, providing a score for three basset-horns in F major (also indicating the alternate Anhang
numbers) and dating composition as between 1783 and 1788. (The
Biancolli listing indicates that they were all in B-flat major and
scored for clarinets and bassoon.) In the midst of all of this
confusion, the one thing that seems to be certain is that Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart composed these divertimenti for the brothers Anton and Johann Stadler, both of whom excelled at both clarinet and basset-horn.
Today's
performance was given by two clarinets (Mark Brandenburg and Karla
Avila) and bassoon (Carla Wilson), consistent with Biancolli's Anhang listing, as well as the recording available in the Brilliant Classics collection of Mozart's complete works
(which, incidentally, includes a sixth divertimento that begins with an
original rondo followed by two arrangements of arias from Le Nozze di Figaro and two from Don Giovanni).
One of its distinguishing features is the presence of two slow
movements; but, as was the case with K. 334, Mozart saves some of his
most adventurous writing for the trio of the Menuetto, which, in any
other setting, would be taken as the most predictable of formal
structures. Also important is that all three of the voices are given
"focal" status at some point in the course of the work, leading one to
wonder whether or not the work really was originally composed for three
"equal" basset-horns.
There are also two performing versions of the second work on the program, the K. 375 serenade in E-flat major. Mozart composed it on October 15, 1781 for St. Theresa's Day
for two clarinets (again Brandenburg and Avila), two horns (David
Sprung and Cameron Kopf), and two bassoons (Wilson joined by Alice
Benjamin). He then revised it in July of 1782 to include two oboe
parts. As my listing of personnel indicates, the sextet version was
given at this performance. Sprung observed in his introductory remarks
that both versions are so well balanced that it is hard to tell that one
is a revision of the other. The Allegro Finale may be the most
familiar movement of this work; but Mozart is again at his most
adventurous in a Menuetto trio (this time the second of two). Again,
this is a work in which no voice is insignificant; and the whole
concert's "all winds" take on Mozart offered a refreshing perspective of
music that should be heard more often.
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