Oregon Music News

There’s a big mystery behind Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in E-flat major. Since the original manuscript has never been found, did Mozart really write this piece? Mozart scholar and pianist Robert Levin did so much research about this topic that he wrote a 492-page book entitled “Who Wrote the Mozart Four-Wind Concertante” and has “reconstructed” the piece to make it sound more like what Mozart would’ve written.

Levin’s reconstruction will be performed in an upcoming Oregon Symphony concert by four principals from the orchestra: David Buck, flute, John Cox, French horn, Martin Hebert, oboe, and Carin Miller bassoon. I met them during their ensemble rehearsal in the living room of Hebert’s home to discuss this piece.

I think that it’s great that an OSO concert will feature you all? Did one of you suggest this piece or did it come from Carlos?

MH: It was suggested to us.

Have all of you played it before?

MH: Yes, but not in this particular version. The version that is usually done is the one that features the clarinet rather than the flute. David has read Levin’s book and can explain it all.

DB: It’s a very long story as to why those two pieces are different. The short version of the story is something like this. The original Mozart Sinfonia concertante is lost. What we have handed down is an arrangement of just the solo parts with orchestral accompaniment written in the 1830s with different instrumentation. That’s the version with solos for oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. I’ve got the score for that right here.

What a sec. You’re a flutist. Why do you have the score for the version with clarinet?

DB: Well, I tried to buy the Levin score, and they sent me the wrong one!

[Laughter all around]

DB: But the version for clarinet is different than the one that Mozart originally wrote and mentioned in his letters in 1778. That original score doesn’t exist, because it was probably destroyed.

JC: Or it is in some private collection somewhere.

DB: Robert Levin theorizes that it might have been destroyed during the French revolution, because the library for the orchestra that premiered this piece was in the Tuileries Palace, which was sacked three times and eventually burned down during the Paris Commune in 1871. So if the original score was there, it’s gone.

So, what are some of the differences between the versions – the one with clarinet and the one that Levin wrote for the flute?

JC: You can see many differences, for example in the horn parts. In the traditional version the horn part was done in the style that Mozart wrote for Joseph Leutgeb, a famous horn player and a friend of Mozart. Mozart wrote concertos and the quintet for horn and string quartet for Leutgeb, and the traditional Sinfonia concertante has a horn part in that style. But the horn player that Mozart actually wrote the Sinfonia concertante for was another famous virtuoso, Giovanni Punto. Punto wasn’t even a member of the orchestra in Paris. He was a very popular, traveling horn player. Beethoven wrote his Sonata for horn and piano for Punto. Over 4,000 people attended Punto’s funeral.

That many at a funeral for a horn player of all things!

JC: [Laughing] Yes! It can happen! Anyway, Punto played in a different style than Leutgeb. So Levin in his scholarship reconstructed this piece, the Sinfonia concertante, in the style that Punto did. I think that Levin succeeded for the most part though some things seem kind of dubious.

DB: What Levin tried to do is difficult. He thinks that the version that was handed down to us for clarinet was written to highlight a clarinetist who was very excellent. For example, the clarinet part is much more extensive than the other three parts – which are much easier. Mozart would have written a much more balanced style for all of the soloists.

So, Levin doled out the clarinet parts in a way that would make sense. That’s a really difficult thing to do.

The St. Martin in the Fields recording that I have – which uses the Levin version – seems very balanced to me. The bassoon part percolates along really well.

CM: A lot of the music that I’m playing is definitely from the clarinet part in the other version. The scrubba-dubba sixteenth notes for the bassoon is taken from the clarinet.

Were bassoons able to play that kind of music in Mozart’s day?

CM: Mozart wrote a bassoon concerto that has a lot of technical challenges. So, yes, this falls in line with Mozart’s writing for bassoon. And the bassoon concerto was a much earlier work; so bassoons had been developing pretty well. They could handle the tricky stuff that Mozart wrote.

JC: This Levin piece is a lippier version to get through than the traditional piece with the clarinet.

What do you mean by lippier?

MH: It’s harder on your lips.

JC: Yes, it requires more strength to get through.

So these living room rehearsals are real helpful?

JC: Yes, but we could’ve read through this piece for the first time at the first orchestral rehearsal and come within 90-95 percent of what we will end up with.

MH: But the last 5 percent or more is really important, because it gets the subtle details that we can get exactly together and we can polish the piece.

DB: It’s always fun with a piece like this, because everyone works on their parts individually and hears things slightly differently. So we have to come together and sort of duke it out.

[Laughter by all]

MH: Then we all hate each other!

[More laughter!]

DB: It’s been really fascinating to hear everyone’s individual ideas about the music.

JC: And the beautiful thing is how everyone brings different gifts to how we listen to the music and what we are looking for. We’ll bring those gifts back to the orchestra, and work better in the orchestra as a team.

CM: This kind of small ensemble rehearsal is really valuable. We can make eye contact and communicate. With the regular orchestra seating, I would need eyes in the back of my head to communicate with the horns.

MH: This solo opportunity is a really terrific thing for us. Three of us – Carin, David, and I – are relatively new to the orchestra. John is still relatively new to the orchestra…

JC: Well thanks a lot Marty…

MH: … in geological time!

[Peals of laughter]

JC: Just because I’ve been in the orchestra for 29 percent of its existence doesn’t mean…

CM: Who is counting!

Is this music so easy that you play it blindfolded?

All: Nope, no way!

MH: The last movement, in particular, is a theme and variations and it has lots of flashy stuff for each instrument.

Do you have to play out of register?

MH: Most of the music is in the normal register of each instrument.

CM: In the Dutilleux piece – which is in the second half of the program, We will be playing a lot of music that is out of register.

JC: Three of us will be playing that piece. One of us will be pulling into his driveway when the second half starts.

[Laughter – especially from Cox]

DB: That piece is a challenge because normally soloists just play the concerto and go home. Well, John isn’t in the Dutilleux number.

MH: The Dutilleux piece is called The Double partly because it uses two orchestras. There’s a chamber orchestra up front and the larger orchestra in back.

JC: In essence with that piece, you’ve got a concertante on both sides, so to speak. There are two horn parts, but they are in the larger orchestra and not in the chamber orchestra.

CM: It’s really helpful to rehearse like this and play these pieces, because it helps us to develop our woodwind sound.

DB: Ideally, with these pieces you want the orchestra to sound like chamber music. We did a quintet piece with Yoshi our principal clarinetist last year and that was great.

One more Mozart question… was any of the Sinfonia concertante that was handed down his writing?

DB: The solo parts of what we have are probably original. What we have is a copy of a copy of an arrangement. It’s a copy by Mozart’s biographer, Otto Jahn, and at the time, he thought that he was working from an original. Jahn was collecting Mozart works for his scholarship. But it was a copy from an arrangement and the orchestra parts had nothing to do with Mozart.

JC: In the third movement of the pre-Levin version there’s an orchestral interlude between each variation. That interlude is more like what Rossini would’ve written. Levin stripped that stuff out of the piece. And Rossini wrote some wind-quartet music. But the melodies for the soloists are from Mozart. There’s no doubt about that.

DB: The whole thing is a detective story. What happened to the original work? We are pretty sure that whatever Mozart wrote was never performed. And the reason is that Mozart was in Paris and was trying to get a position as a Kapellmeister there. But at that time there was a composer by the name of Giuseppe Cambini who lived in Paris and only wrote sinfonia concertantes. Cambini wrote about 80 of them, and he sold them by subscription. That was his gig. Well, Mozart came to town, and he thought that he would show Cambini up by writing a sinfonia concertante. Cambini found out and conspired with the copyist to make sure that the parts wouldn’t be copied. So the soloists showed up to play Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante and oops none of the parts had been made. So they played a work by Cambini instead. They tried to do it later one more time, but the parts still hadn’t been copied. Then Punto had to leave Paris for engagements elsewhere. The original from Mozart was probably read through in someone’s home, but was never performed publically.

Wow! Intrigue and backstabbing in the music business!

JC: Mozart was only 22-years old in 1778, and they really pulled a number on him.

Good luck with the concert!

All: Thanks!

CM: We’ll have to take a poll from the audience after the performance to find out if they think that it sounds like Mozart!