New Version of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante

James Bash of Oregon Music News reports that

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.

Musicians of The Oregon Symphony recently performed this version and sat down for an interview on the topic for Oregon Music News. This photo of the wind principal players involved in the performance is linked from their article.

As to brief background on the work, this new version uses flute instead of clarinet. As explained by Principal Flute David Buck,

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.

For us on horn, this portion of the interview with comments from Buck and Principal Horn John Cox is the key part.

[JB:] 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.

[JB:]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.

There is much more in the interview, including some discussion of the intrigue as to why this work appears to never have been performed in Paris as originally intended. Check out the full interview for more. And check out their site; Oregon Music News is a web concept that should be exploered in other states.