The Virtuoso Clarinet (CD)

Though first developed in the early eighteenth century, and accepted as a standard orchestral instrument in the 1790s–1800s, the clarinet had a long gestation, lasting into the 1830s, before it became standardised as the instrument we know today. Nevertheless certain composers were attracted to providing substantial works for it long before then. The most obvious example is Mozart, who wrote his Clarinet Concerto and Quintet for the clarinet virtuoso Anton Stadler (1753–1812) (whose ‘basset clarinet’ was one form of the instrument that did not find wide acceptance).