Tonight’s performance has been made possible by the generosity of an anonymous donor in memory of Tim Brown — gentle soul, enquiring mind, devoted to chamber music.

Tonight’s Tasting Music performance features one of Mozart’s great chamber works. The legacy of this work is not just the invention of a musical form, the clarinet quintet, but perhaps the establishment of the clarinet itself as an indispensable part of the corps of classical instruments. The sonority of late Mozart leans into the clarinet, even displacing the more standard pair of oboes in the orchestra of the time. And behind this epiphany on Mozart’s part was one man, Anton Stadler. Stadler was a virtuoso of the instrument whose playing inspired Mozart to compose both this quintet and ultimately his final completed work, the Clarinet Concerto, K. 622. Oh, and that famous incomplete final piece? The Requiem is scored for two clarinets and no oboes. OK, ok… you know your history. Technically, the clarinets of the Concerto and the Requiem are basset horns, a variant of the clarinet with access to additional low notes. But it was Stadler who figured prominently in the invention and perfection of the basset horn, too. Tonight, our Stadler is named Schempf.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1765-1791)

Quintet in A for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581

I. Allegro

II. Larghetto

III. Menuetto

IV. Allegretto con variazioni

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Artists: Timothy Christie, viola; Norbert Lewandowski, cello; Vanessa Moss, violin; Maria Sampen, violin; Kevin Schempf, clarinet