Mozart – Clarinet Quintet; String Quartet K421
Jörg Widmann; Arcanto Quartet
Harmonia Mundi HMC 902168
Ever since the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983, I’ve realized that Mozart’s Quintet in A Major for clarinet and string quartet is more than a wonderful part of the repertoire for my instrument: it is a gift left for humanity. A luminous nearly perfect piece, K581 seems intended to assuage grief, to remind us that mortality is not so bad after all. Every new recording of it, indeed every performance, is a way of sharing the divine. In a recent release, Jörg Widmann and the Arcanto Quartet do justice to the music in a way that refreshes the ear with a bracing clarity in the strings and absolutely stunning playing in the clarinet. Widmann chooses to perform on the altered basset clarinet, allowing for some extra-low notes in some passages, but it makes little impact on the overall effect. More telling is the blistering tempo of the 16th-note variation in the fourth movement. Has this man no limits?
The strings adhere to a classical style: the near-absence of vibrato, the almost nasal colour of gut strings. Arcanto is a wonderful ensemble, playing as one, snapping back and forth between lead and accompaniment (the first trio in the third movement is Mozart’s little thank-you gift to the string players, a micro quartet while the tacet clarinettist swabs his horn). Do the five get carried away in the variations? Is the expression perhaps more coarse than necessary at times? Perhaps. But the violist, thank goodness, is not given to self-indulgence, and the piece ends in a flashy coda that few could manage with such a combination of wicked speed and beautiful style.
Arcanto performs K421 on their own in the companion piece. Worth hearing as well, and a welcome deviation from the usual inclusion of a lesser work for the same combination.
Concert note: Jörg Widmann is featured as both clarinetist and composer in New Music Concerts’ “A Portrait of Jörg Widmann” on April 18 at Betty Oliphant Theatre.
