Brought to you this hour by

Advertising and Web Hosting on Woodwind.Org!

Doublereed Archive - Posting 000089.txt from 2003/07

From: "Lacy, Edwin" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: [DR-L] Mozart SECOND Bassoon Concerto?!?
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:15:22 -0400

> My experience with the existing Mozart concerto has been such to make
me
> wish it had been destroyed by fire as well. Am I the only one who
feels
> we were totally robbed, compared to the clarinet and oboe? Grrrr...

I don't feel that way at all. It's true that the bassoon concerto is a
relatively early work, written in 1775 I think, when he was only 18
years old. In fact, it is the earliest of his surviving wind concertos,
while the clarinet concerto, written in 1791, just months before he
died, is his last wind concerto. The clarinet concerto naturally shows
Mozart at his most mature, but after all, works that he wrote when he
was younger than 10 years old are still regularly performed today. I
think his earliest symphony dates from 1762 or 63, when he was about six
or seven years old. It is not a great work in the sense that the late
symphonies or the Requiem mass are, but it is still a legitimate work,
miles ahead of what many of his more mature contemporaries were writing
in that period.

If you analyze the bassoon concerto in detail, you will be amazed at the
genius that shows through it. I think it wears very well, and that our
appreciation of it tends to grow through greater familiarity. At least,
mine has.

All that being said, I have stated on previous occasions that the
repertoire of the bassoon is quite sparse when compared to that of our
colleagues on the flute and even the oboe, and almost infinitesimal in
comparison to the literature of the piano or violin. As a result, a
work of modest quality may tend to seem like a masterpiece in our eyes.

Ed Lacy
University of Evansville