concerto

D. is practicing. Usually, she doesn’t play at home (”it’s work! what were you thinking!”) but now she must because another recital is coming up. She once told me that when she was still studying, her birthday present was her housemates having rehearsed the Mozart Clarinet Quintet for her to play along with them. She came downstairs for breakfast, and the quartet was waiting for her to join in. Like the quintet, the clarinet concerto is standard repertoire; before Mozart there are no clarinets and so this concerto is a piece of tremendous significance. Playing it is also like climbing Mount Everest (auditions always demand it) and so it invokes fear and pleasure at the same time. D. always plays the cadenza her father wrote for her, which makes the concerto “hers” by family tradition. So, now I’m hearing it daily, broken up in passages and attacks. Her studying is disciplined and methodical, like training for a marathon, which I suppose this is. I know everyone always picks the second movement, the adagio, but I like the third movement, the rondo, best. The crises are all due to the clarinet itself, which is a rare Wurlitzer and has to be nurtured and cared for to survive yet another concert. The one person who could repair her set of clarinets has now retired, so off to Cologne it is, next week.