/
Please enable JavaScript to play our music tracks!
All tracks by Christian Petermann
1611 Tracks
Waveform will be available soon!
All rights reserved. No usage without prior licensing. Please be fair. Thank you!
The piece is based on a theme from the last movement of the 2nd Violin Concerto in B minor by violinist Niccolò Paganini, a rondo in which the harmonies are supported by the ringing of a hand bell. Liszt had already used the theme for piano in his Variations Grande Fantaisie de Bravoure sur 'La Clochette' de Paganini in B minor. He then reworked the piece in the third etude of the 12 Études d'exécution transcendante in A flat minor. The final version of the Grandes Etudes de Paganin is written in G sharp minor. It is now the most popular and frequently played version. The etude is played at Allegretto and is basically a sequence of different finger exercises for the right hand. At the beginning there are huge staccato jumps of the right hand for which the piece is notorious. This is followed by exercises for the tension of the right hand , octave finger change exercises, trills, runs with almost exclusive participation of the weaker fingers, ascending sequences of fourth sex chords and finally chromatic octave runs. Since the difficulties are limited to the right hand, the piece is not as difficult for large, trained hands as it is commonly portrayed.
At that time the clarinet was in a completely different guise than today's, which was only reached in the middle of the 19th century. Nevertheless, Mozart was able to make optimal use of this instrument by drawing original and expressive sounds. The concerto is regarded as one of his best works and is of fundamental importance for clarinet lovers and clarinetists. It was originally composed for Bassettos Horn, an instrument close to Mozart's heart, which he almost always included in his chamber music works and in any case as a soloist: Of the first version, only a well-developed fragment of the only first movement has survived, along with some very incomplete sketches of the second and top movements. The accompanying ensemble is chamber music: oboes, trumpets and trombones are excluded whose timbre could have competed with that of the solo instrument[1]. The clarinet expresses itself with melodies that are sometimes soft, sometimes dramatic, but the tone is always calm. Of the three movements that make up the concerto, the proverb is that in which the melody touches the highest peaks and reaches moments of intimacy and moving melancholy.
