Mozart Concerto for Basset Clarinet

Violin I

Eugene Kim, Concertmaster
Sharon Bartley
David Engel
Dawn Levy
Jessica Milli

Violin II

Rachel Lane, Principal
Wendy Chun
Richard Hong
Sachi Rosenbaum
Seiichi Takedai

Viola

Michael Garrahan, Principal
Stephen Fisher
Ashley Reinhart

Cello

Debra Anker, Principal
Ethan Butler
Philip Hopko

Bass

Dale Houck, Principal

Flute

Eric Abalahin
Colleen Darkow

Oboe

Susan Herlick
Jane Hughes

Clarinet

Susan Sandler

Basset Clarinet

Zac West

Bassoon

Katrien van Dijk
Bill Jokela

Horn

Jim McIntyre
Bruce McWhirter

Trumpet

Chris Erbe
Bruce Stanly

Timpani

James Adams

Stage Managers

Debra Anker
Ethan Butler
Katrien van Dijk

Elizabeth Bley is a Vandoren Artist-Clinician and is the Principal Clarinetist with The Loudoun Symphony Orchestra. She maintains a large private studio (teaching 34 students per week) and works throughout Northern Virginia as an adjudicator, clinician, master class instructor, clarinet sectional coach, and freelance musician. Ms. Bley is the editor of clarinet music for the Virginia Band & Orchestra Directors Association, grading and maintaining a database of over 4,000 solo and ensemble works for clarinet. She has performed many times as a soloist at the Bruges Conservatory in Belgium, where she received a Clarinetissimo Talent Award for her “outstanding performances and high artistic level.” [read more]

Now in his seventeenth season with the Washington Sinfonietta,  acclaimed by the Washington Post as “…one of Washington’s premier conductors of both old and new music…”, Joel Lazar was Music Director of the JCC Symphony Orchestra from 1988 through 2008 and has continued with that orchestra in its new identity as the Symphony of the Potomac. He conducted the Theater Chamber Players in engagements at the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and on tour from 1986 to 2003, and has appeared as guest conductor with many orchestras and contemporary music ensembles in the Washington area. [read more]

Mozart’s involvement with the Masonic movement was deep and complex, both in musical and social terms. Thinly disguised Masonic ideals and rituals are central of course to the libretto of The Magic Flute (1791) as well as to the play, Thamos, King of Egypt by Baron Tobias Philipp von Gebler (1726-1786) for which Mozart wrote elaborate incidental music between 1773 and 1780, some of which presages the language and gesture of the later opera.

Mozart also wrote music to be used in Masonic ceremonies. The Viennese lodges of his time were fortunate to have not only Mozart but also many of his colleagues, both performers and composers among their members. It was once a commonplace of Mozart scholarship to seek out gestures and motifs associated with his Masonic music in other works as well; as the normal musical language of high Classicism is, however, permeated with much of the same material this has at times led to an exaggerated attribution of Masonic association to Mozart’s later works with, for instance, a key signature of three flats (E-flat major, C minor), melodic movement in parallel thirds, and “knocking” rhythmic motives, all of which are plentiful in music specifically intended for ritual purposes.

The Masonic Funeral Music, a dark, compact work in C minor, was composed for the funeral service on November 17, 1785, in memory of two of Mozart's fellow-Masons, members of the Viennese aristocracy. Its somber coloration is in part due to the unusual presence of a contrabassoon and a basset horn in the orchestra’s wind section, and the absence of flutes.

The work can be divided into sections, framed symmetrically between introductory and concluding material. Conventional formulas associated with mourning and grief abound; we encounter drooping phrases, striking contrasts between loud and soft, high and low, jagged rhythmic figures, and unexpected harmonic turns. Its middle section is a contrapuntal elaboration around phrases of Gregorian chant used in the Requiem Mass, played in the middle register by oboes and clarinet. Finally, we return to the unsettled mood of the opening, gradually relaxing in intensity until it resolves into a tranquil C major chord.

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Mozart’s 1791 Clarinet Concerto, on the other hand, is predominantly lyrical in character, although it includes many virtuosic episodes. Composed—like his other late works for clarinet—for his friend, Anton Stadler, it was his last major composition and largest wind concerto. Within the traditional three-movement layout and customary internal structure of the Classical concerto, Mozart offers us a variety of textures and solo-orchestra relationships unique among his own wind and string concerti and those by other composers of that time, along with an unparalleled depth of expression and range of moods.

Like the slightly earlier Clarinet Quintet, the Clarinet Concerto was intended for the basset clarinet, invented by Stadler, an instrument with additional low notes. Until the 1950s it was invariably played on a conventional clarinet, in modified form, as first published in 1801, adapted to its range. Nowadays it is also heard on modern basset clarinets, as in our performance, or on replicas of late 18th-century prototypes.

Notes ©2025 by Joel Lazar

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We are delighted to have as a member of our viola section Steve Fisher, a distinguished scholar of 18th-century music, who has edited Haydn’s Symphony No. 75 for the ongoing Henle critical edition of the composer’s complete works. It seemed obvious to ask him for his observations on this work. [JL]

Haydn spent most of the 1770s and 1780s working as musical director at the palace of the Hungarian nobleman Prince Nikolaus Esterházy composing hundreds of works for that gentleman’s amusement. On the night of November 18, 1779, fire destroyed several buildings at the palace, including the opera house; nearly the entire library of Haydn's orchestra went up in flames. To remedy the situation, Haydn wrote two new symphonies, Nos. 63 and 75. The original parts to both still survive. They appear to have been composed in such a hurry that Haydn had the first three movements copied before the finales were ready; the last movements are copied by different copyists. In No. 75 the finale seems a bit short; perhaps Haydn would have extended it had he had had more time.  The parts also show corrections and changes in Haydn's hand, names of performers, and a tiny date '779' on one violin part to No. 75.

Symphony No. 75 shows many features of Haydn’s later symphonies: the slow introduction to the first movement, the second movement in variation form, the touch of folk style in the minuet, and the rondo finale. The symphony circulated widely, often with trumpet and timpani parts added to Haydn’s original scoring. Its popularity in London may have helped Haydn understand the taste of the British audience for which he composed his last dozen symphonies. Mozart also liked the piece. Around the beginning of 1784 he jotted down a theme from this symphony on a sheet of scrap paper on which he was making notes for his concert season that winter. He seems to have used the slow movement of the symphony as the model for the variation slow movement of the piano concerto K. 450, which he completed on March 15 of that year, and two years later, when he next sat down to compose a new symphony (the “Prague” symphony, K. 504), he seems to have had the opening of Haydn’s symphony in mind.

Stephen Fisher

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The Sinfonietta wishes to thank the following Washington Sinfonietta Friends for their generous contributions and support:

Individuals

Debra and Anthony Anker*
Dominic Argentieri
Barbara Bankoff
Barbara Burrell*
Eric Cline*
Kirsten Dalboe
Mr and Mrs Jonathan Davis*
Stephen Fisher
Sheryl and David Friedlander
Eve Farber*
Rosanne and Douglas Gochman
Charlotte Goldy*
Tibor and Tania Ham
Sandra Harris*
Mariah Heinzerling*
Stephanie Herman
Gerald Hodgkins
Ilene Klinghoffer

Joel and Susan Lazar
Dawn Levy*
Jody Maxmin*
Jim McIntyre and Leila Rao
Edwina Moldover
Sarah Morris*
Mitch Muhlheim
Robin Ngo*
Jennifer Radin*
Susan and Laurence Ramin*
Scott Silverman*
Avery Staples
Robert Staples
Seiichi Takedai
Jon Teske
Nina Uzick*
Walter Wynn

*in memory of Diane Cline

Corporations/Organizations

City of Falls Church
Blackbaud Giving Fund

Facilities

Father Burl Salmon and Jeff Drake, The Falls Church Episcopal

Volunteers

Those who have thoughtfully volunteered for us in seasons past include:

Debra Anker
Richard Hong
Emilia Jurzyk
Alexia Kauffman
Ilene Klinghoffer
Alice Lieberman
Lucy Lieberman
Charles Manning