Mozart loved the clarinet and was one of the first composers to include it in the standard orchestral configuration of his symphonic works. The expressive warmth of its middle and low registers, its wide range, ability to make quick and powerful crescendos and decrescendos – much more so than other woodwind instruments – rendered the clarinet ideal in Mozart’s eyes for chamber music with strings.
It was clarinetist Anton Stadler, who inspired Mozart to think of the clarinet as more than merely a voice in the texture of orchestral sound.
Mozart originally wrote his Clarinet Quintet, in late 1789. One of the supreme works of the chamber music repertory, Mozart dubbed it “Stadler’s Quintet,” though the name has not stuck. Two years later, Stadler was also the dedicatee of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K.622.
The Quintet is not a work for solo instrument and string accompaniment. It is a masterfully integrated chamber work for equal partners in which the clarinet blends and the individual strings occasionally take center stage.
Here is my favorite string quartet, the Hagen Quartet from Salzburg, with soloist Sabine Meyer to play the 4th movement for you:
