Part of the early music movement is playing music from a specific time period on historically appropriate instruments, and as a result, the wide range of repertoire I perform requires a large number of instruments in various keys and pitches. My primary instruments for music of the Classical period are 5 and 12-keyed clarinets made of boxwood with ebony mouthpieces in Bb, A, and C. I have several originals in my collection that I occasionally perform on, but my “day to day” instruments are, for the most part, replicas. I perform on instruments by Joel Robinson and Jochen Seggelke. For music of the high Romantics such as Schumann, Brahms, and Gade, I perform on a matched set of original C. Kruspe Bb and A clarinets from ca. 1865.
For the music of the Baroque period such as cantatas by Francesco Conti and the concerti of Fasch and Paganelli, I use a soprano chalumeau by Tutz, with a matching tenor chalumeau for the music of Telemann and Graupner. The music of Vivaldi and Chinzer requires a 2-keyed Denner clarinet with a much more direct and “trumpety” sound, hence the Italian name for the instrument, “clarinetto.” However, the majority of Baroque repertoire for a clarinetist remains with the soprano chalumeau in the form of arias, such as those by Vivaldi, Joseph I, and Bononcini.
The concerto and quintet of Mozart and concerto movement of Süssmayr require a basset clarinet with a chromatic range to low C (low B in the Mozart Concerto), and I perform this music on a self-built instrument based on the 1794 “Riga Drawing” of Anton Stadler’s own Lotz instrument. With a slightly wider bore and longer sounding length, this instrument has a deeper timbre in the low register, while still retaining the singing quality of the upper clarion register of the clarinet. For music requiring a Viennese basset horn, I am in the final stages of tuning my own replica.
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