Concerto in A major for Clarinet and Orchestra, K. 622

I Allegro II Adagio III Rondo:Allegro

Having been ignominiously dismissed from the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg in 1781, Mozart had married Constanze, sister of Aloysia Weber, and settled in Vienna, where, at first, he was much in demand as composer, teacher and performer. His finest operas, symphonies, concertos and chamber music were also written in this period. But neither Mozart nor his wife managed their finances well, and towards the end of his life he fell on hard times, having to rely heavily on the generosity of his friends.

One such friend was Anton Stadler: in 1787, he and his brother Johann were the first clarinettists ever to join the Vienna Court Orchestra. The clarinet was still being developed as an orchestral instrument and was still something of a novelty. Mozart however had heard and liked the clarinet in the orchestra at Mannheim and a friendly collaboration emerged between himself and Stadler that bore fruit in both the orchestration of Mozart's larger works and the composition of a number of important chamber works, including his famous A major Clarinet Quintet. Both the Quintet K. 581 and the Concerto in A major K. 622, were written for Stadler to play on the basset clarinet in A, an experimental instrument (now obsolete) developed by Stadler, which extended the range of the ordinary clarinet downwards. The original manuscript is no longer extant, and today's performances usually use the better-known arrangement for A clarinet first published in 1801.

The work is characterized by wonderfully idiomatic writing for clarinet, at different times exploiting every facet of its extensive range, with frequent exchanges between the soloist and orchestra. The lively opening Allegro is in the ritornello-sonata form found in many of Mozart's piano concertos. The slow movement Adagio has all the intensity of an operatic aria. Its thoroughly singable first section gives way to a much more passionate quasi-improvisatory middle section before returning to the original material. The final movement, a complex mixture of sonata and rondo forms, is full of characteristic joie de vivre. An appealing work on many levels, its instant accessibility belies the profoundness of its melodic expression, its richly imaginative harmonic palette and its complex and varied orchestral textures.