Divertimento No.3 in B flat, K. 229/439b, for two clarinets and bassoon.
Allegro
Menuetto & Trio
Adagio
Menuetto & Trio
Rondo: Allegro assai
Quintet in E flat, K.452, for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon.
Largo – Allegro moderato
Larghetto
Rondo: Allegretto
Almost all the great achievements of Classical chamber music stand in line of descent from the predominant instrumental forms of the mid-18th Century – the Serenade and the Divertimento. Usually intended as background music, often for outdoor performance, they could be in anything from 3 to 9 movements. The string divertimento, cultivated by Haydn and later Mozart, evolved into the string quartet, the perfection of domestic music. Wind serenades, usually designed for outdoor performance, evolved more fitfully, reaching a peak of popularity in the early decades of the 19th Century before becoming all but extinct in the Romantic era. The corpus of wind serenades does, however, include several true masterpieces, the most splendid being Mozart’s great C minor Serenade (K.388/384) and his "Gran Partita" for 13 instruments (K.361/370a). The form also prompted Mozart towards experiments with wind instruments in different combinations, resulting in some of his most delightful lighter works as well as some of his most inimitable masterpieces. The Divertimento K.229/439b, and the Piano and Wind Quintet K.452 are perfect examples of each.
No-one is quite sure when exactly Mozart wrote his five divertimenti for three basset-horns; hence the widely divergent numbers given by the earliest and most recent compilers of the Köchel catalogue! The most recent scholarship places them in the 1783-4 period, which would make them near-contemporaries of Mozart’s greatest wind serenades, postdating the start of his friendship with the basset-horn virtuoso and fellow Mason Anton Stadler. Mozart found Stadler’s playing a particular inspiration, and, with Mozart’s extra-ordinary ability to exploit the possibilities and limitations of even the most bizarre combination of instruments, the writing of these five concise works must have been a cheerful task. This shows through in the music; the five movements of the third divertimento are Mozart at his freshest and most characteristic, in perfect command of this unusual ensemble. Basset-horns have long since been supplanted by the modern clarinet, and, without using period instruments, today’s combination of two clarinets and bassoon probably comes closest to the sound Mozart imagined. There is an "authentic" precedent for this compromise; the first published edition (1803) of these divertimenti was already in an arrangement for clarinets and bassoon, and they have enjoyed a remarkable second career since then in arrangements for two violins, for three flutes, for oboe, clarinet and bassoon, as surprisingly idiomatic string trios, and even as "Der Wiener Sonatinen" for solo piano! It is friendly, relaxed music, written purely for the enjoyment of player and listener, and while public performances have been rare it has remained consistently popular with domestic music-makers to this day.
The Quintet for Piano and Wind, K.452 is another, higher matter. Mozart completed it in Vienna in mid-March 1784. Although he had already written concerti for oboe, horn and bassoon, and, through his friendship with Stadler, was already well acquainted with the possibilities of the clarinet and basset-horn, his assurance and mastery in this wholly original combination of instruments is astonishing. At no point does any one instrument come to predominate; Mozart blends and contrasts the five very different instrumental timbres so effectively that one never becomes aware of their limitations or indeed of anything other than the effortless flow of some of his loveliest melodic and harmonic inspirations. The key to this achievement lies in Mozart’s skilful construction of themes; melodic groups and sequences in the Quintet are frequently built up from phrases of no more than two bars, allowing for frequent changes in tone-colour and preventing the wind players from becoming exhausted. That this is infinitely more difficult than it sounds was inadvertently proven by the 26-year old Beethoven in his Piano and Wind Quintet, a delightful work, but one which no critic has ever seriously placed next to Mozart’s or even amongst Beethoven’s best music. And where Beethoven failed, no other composer’s attempt on this form has even entered the repertoire. Mozart’s Piano and Wind Quintet is unique, and he realised it. Nine days after its première, at the Vienna Burgtheater on 1st April 1784, in which he had played the piano and Stadler had taken the clarinet part, he wrote to his father Leopold in Salzburg. "I composed a Quintet…which called forth the very greatest applause. I myself consider it to be the best work I have ever composed. How I wish you could have heard it! And how beautifully it was performed!"
The Quintet is in three movements.
R. G. Bratby 2000
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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