Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622

The concerto unfolds in three movements, played with a pause between each.

I. Allegro: The orchestra opens with a cheerful, striding tune before the clarinet enters and takes it over, spinning it into something more personal. Listen for how the soloist glides between the instrument's low, dark register and its bright upper range, often within a single phrase, showing off the clarinet's unusually wide reach.

II. Adagio: The famous slow movement. The clarinet sings a long, unhurried melody over quiet strings, a tune many listeners will recognize even without knowing its source, since it has been used in films and arrangements for decades. The mood stays gentle and unbroken throughout.

III. Rondo, Allegro: A dance-like main theme returns again and again between contrasting episodes, some brisk, some more lyrical. The soloist gets rapid runs and wide leaps that put the clarinet's agility on display, and the movement ends with the same buoyant tune that opened it, closing the piece on a light, energetic note.

Mozart wrote this concerto in Vienna in 1791, the final year of his life, for the clarinetist Anton Stadler, a friend and fellow Freemason for whom he had already composed chamber works featuring the instrument. He originally sketched material for a related instrument before settling the piece for standard clarinet. It was premiered in Prague in October 1791, with Stadler as soloist, just weeks before Mozart's death that December. The concerto remained relatively obscure for over a century before rising, in the twentieth century, to become one of the most performed and recorded works in the clarinet repertoire, prized by soloists and audiences for the warmth and range it draws from the instrument.