Mozart, in a bankrupt
"Oh, God! The situation I am in, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. [...] Oh, God! Instead of thanking you, I come to you with new requests! —Instead of paying off my debts, I come asking for more. [...] It´s now up to you, my one and only friend, whether you will or can lend me another 500 gulden? ... "The author of this plea is Mozart, and the recipient, his freemason friend Michael Puchberg, who must have been a kind soul, for Mozart turned to him for long years during his stay in Vienna, with the same invariable purpose, and Michael the goodman was always there, solid as a rock, to support Wolfgang Amadeus.
After a trip to Leipzig, in 1789, invited by his friend Prince Karl Lichnowsky, and where Mozart gave a public concert that was a success but that did not report anything financially, Wolfgang returned to Vienna, where he found Constance very ill and pregnant with another child. In the meantime, he was commissioned an opera −Cossi fan tutte. With that goal in mind, another letter was sent to the devoted Michael, since Constance had to travel to Baden again and had to pay for travel, doctors and cures.
In July 1791, while working on the libretto suggested by his friend Schikaneder and which was to be his last opera, The Magic Flute, Constance had another son, a boy. This time, the boy survived.
In those same days, the Mozart home was visited by a stranger who delivered a letter in which an unknown person requested the writing of a Requiem. Wolfgang continued to work on Schikaneder's script, but with a bad feeling stemming from that strange visit. However, The Magic Flute was hugely successful in its premiere on September 30.
Life was looking good again. He thought of traveling to England the following year. In October he was strong enough to give his clarinet player friend Anton Stadler the only Clarinet Concerto he composed. Then he wrote the Masonic Cantata, and resumed the writing of the Requiem. He did not manage to finish it. Wolfgang Amadeus died, surrounded by friends, in the early morning of December 5, 1791. He was 35 years old.
Clarinet Concerto in A major, K 622
Mozart is one of the few composers who kept a record of his works while he was alive, although he only started it in 1784. This catalog presents the Clarinet Concerto and a Masonic cantata as the last two entries.
Stadler played the concerto at its premiere in Prague on October 16, 1791, and his performance was favorably received.
Composed just two months before his death, the concerto is structured as usual, in three movements in the sequence fast, slow, fast.
Today, Mozart's most popular clarinet concerto movement is the Adagio, its second movement. Its inclusion in the soundtrack of the enjoyable 1985 Sydney Pollack film, Out of Africa, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, contributed to its popularity.
Movements:
00:00 Allegro
12:58 Adagio
20:07 Rondo - Allegro.
The rendition is by Arngunnur Árnadóttir, clarinet, and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Cornelius Meister.
