Carl Maria von Weber – Clarinet Concerto #1 in F Minor, Op. 73 (1811)

This is the only Weber I’ve heard aside from some excerpts from Der Freischütz (1821) that I listened to for a college music history class.  All in all, I’d say it comes across like a competent work by a minor composer, with occasional moments of excellence and quite a bit of “OK, that’ll do.”   Like many works by minor composers, it often feels like an amalgam of elements taken from more inventive predecessors and contemporaries:  the first movement in particular could be summed up pretty neatly as a combination of Beethoven’s storminess, Mozart’s melodic language, and Schubert’s orchestration.  There are some unusual formal touches, including the fact that the movement’s most dramatic climax occurs after the recapitulation has finished (leading one commentator to conclude that it’s not actually in sonata form — a claim that I think reflects a far too reductive view of what sonata form is, one that’s not borne out by the repertoire) — but the material is generic enough that it doesn’t leave a lasting impression.

The other two movements have more to them.  The slow movement’s main theme has a typically Germanic wistfulness to it, like a Schumann character piece that’s meant to suggest a nostalgic memory of childhood.  That material is set off against two other kinds of music:  a return to the first movement’s F minor, full of Sturm und Drang but signifying nothing, and a striking chorale-like passage played by only the solo clarinet and the horns.  The chorale returns briefly at the end, but oddly, the F-minor passage happens only once.  There’s also a surprising transitional passage that links the horn chorale to the return of the main theme:  three sustained horn notes, each followed by an isolated pizzicato chord.  It sounds more like a scene change in an opera than a transition in a piece of instrumental music;  the F-minor music’s disconnection from the rest of the movement also suggests operatic, or at least narrative, thinking.

The third movement is a clownish rondo, full of Rossini-esque twiddling, sudden interruptions and deliberately clunky dancing-elephant appoggiaturas.  It’s also got a minor-mode section that unexpectedly achieves a real sense of pathos, and some surprisingly triumphant climaxes.  If there’s one thing it’s clear that Weber is good at, it’s building to a fortissimo explosion.

Hey, wait a minute.  Forgettable tragic first movement, affecting second movement, sarcastic finale… did I just listen to Schubert’s Fourth Symphony (1816)?

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