Aims and aspirations

Is the kind of performance expected by a composer in his own day valid for later generations of players? We can never really answer this question, if only because life has changed so much during the last couple of centuries. The importance of the microphone in our musical lives and the various implications of air travel are two factors which have brought about such changes that we do not really have the option to turn back the clock. Even if we could hear Anton Stadler's première of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in 1791, we should not necessarily want to adopt all its features; in other words, like all period performers from our own time, we would be bound to exercise elements of choice and taste as much characteristic of the twentieth century as of the eighteenth.

The value of knowledge to complement musical taste has been recognised by generations of composers and performers. The nature and disposition of the clarinet repertory poses some stylistic special problems for even the most receptive of players. We clarinettists lack the opportunity to cultivate a wellhoned baroque performance style from which to formulate a classical mode of expression, whilst in the nineteenth century there is no significant body of sonatas in the period immediately preceding the Brahms works from which to formulate a mature interpretation.