Mozart : Concerto Pour Clarinette

   in Early Music Today (Jun, 2013)
Eric Hoeprich’s playing is spirited but unhurried, with graceful and unintrusive ornamentation. Bruggen supports him with a vibrant and warm string texture, perfumed with rich woodwind tones. The Adagio features a delicate tension between soloist and orchestra. The Rondo finale maximises the basset clarinet’s variety of colour, dynamic and extended tessitura. The concerto is paired, somewhat unusually, with excerpts from ‘La Clemenza di Tito’ (overture and two arias, featuring Joyce DiDonato), the Adagio, K411 and the Maurerische Trauermusik, K477. Despite some shortcomings (who are the other performers in K411 for instance?), the booklet usefully discusses contexts for this repertoire, celebrating the relationship between Mozart (composer), Anton Stadler (clarinettist) and Theodor Lotz …