THE LAST CONCERTO Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Eric Hoeprich Joyce DiDonato Orchestra of the 18th Century Frans Brüggen
GCD 921107
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Performing artists
Eric Hoeprich, clarinets & basset horn Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano Orchestra of the 18th CenturyFrans Brüggen, conductor
Production details
Playing time: 59’33 Recorded live in Haarlem and Amsterdam Dates: February and November 2001 Engineered by Studio van Schuppen Produced by Karl Naegle, Sieuwert Verster and Gerd Berg Executive producer: Carlos Céster Editorial assistant: María Díaz Booklet essay: Eric Hoeprich Booklet in English-Français-Deutsch-Español
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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)
Clarinet Concerto, KV 622 1 Allegro 2 Adagio 3 Rondo Allegro
La Clemenza di Tito, KV 621 (excerpts) 4 Ouverture 5 Aria: Parto, ma tu ben mio 6 Aria: Non più di fiori
7 Adagio, KV 411
8 Maurerische Trauermusik, KV 477
About this CD
In 1992, a program for a concert given by Anton Stadler in Riga in March of 1794 was discovered, where he played the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. Amazingly, this program includes an engraving of the special “Inventions Klarinette”, or basset clarinet, that Stadler had with him to play Mozart’s music. Up until this time, no one knew what the basset clarinet looked like, and it came as a shock to see a long instrument with a bulbous bell on the end. This new release on the Glossa label is the first time the work will appear played on an instrument like what Stadler possessed.
In this recording Mozart’s music for the clarinet and basset horn is heard in various settings, and all the works are associated with the clarinettist Anton Stadler (1753-1812). The Clarinet Concerto is the composer’s last concerto work, and shows the depth of his mature style. The selections from the opera La Clemenza di Tito date from the same period (1791), representing yet another musical form. Lastly, the two works associated with the Masons, the Adagio and the Maurerische Trauermusik, illustrate the quasi-religious underpinnings of the masonic movement expressed through the music’s majestic solemnity.
Listening on the same disc to the marvellous timbres of both Eric Hoeprich’s clarinet and Joyce DiDonato’s voice is a sublime experience.
How has the orchestra’s approach to the Beethoven symphonies evolved over the years?
This is a discussion that is very much alive in the orchestra: when we first started, we had no repertoire. So, with every piece that we were approaching we had to work and to discuss, in the old-fashioned way. For years we worked like this, never doing more than one Beethoven symphony in a year – and then we played it over and over again. So, it took us twelve years before we completed the cycle with the Ninth. If you play such pieces again after so many years, things start to change: tempi have changed and whereas we had always been arrogant about all those conductors, who after a certain period of time, decided to rerecord pieces, we – the orchestra members and me personally – now think that it is a good idea to do it again. [read more...]
Eric Hoeprich returns to Glossa on splendid form with two pillars of the chamber music repertory in the Clarinet Quintets of Mozart and Brahms. For this release – recorded in the tranquil English surroundings of St Martin’s Church, East Woodhay in Hampshire, Hoeprich is joined by the recently-established and much-lauded London Haydn Quartet. [read more...]