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Enchanting Music
The Castalian Quartet and friends,
heard by MALCOLM MILLER
A beguiling account of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet K 581 by the Castalian Quartet with clarinettist Max Welford at a well-filled Hall One in Kings Place [London UK] on 15 June 2012, offered a fine tribute to mark the 200th anniversary -- to the day -- of the death of Anton Stadler (1753-1812), the clarinettist at the Imperial Court Orchestra in Vienna for whom Mozart composed his most enduring clarinet repertoire. Together with Schubert's evergreen Octet D 803, the programme by young artists of the Royal Academy of Music offered refreshing, insightful and virtuosic accounts that affirmed both their future promise and that institution's reputation for excellence.
1789, the year of the French Revolution, was also revolutionary in musical experimentation, and indeed it was the year in which Mozart essayed the recently developed bassett clarinet, Stadler's invention, in his Quintet, later exploiting its low range for his late masterwork the Clarinet Concerto and the aria 'Parto Parto' from La Clemenza di Tito. Indeed the clarinet became central to much of Mozart's Viennese oeuvre, whether opera, piano concerto, symphony or chamber music, and Anton Stadler was a significant inspiration, with his affinity for the chalumeau registers...
Copyright © 21 June 2012
Malcolm Miller,
London UK
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